When you are unkind to yourself, you will know no worse, and deserve no better.
Charles Bukowski. ‘Betting on the muse.’

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“His form is ungainly - his intellect small -”
(So the bellman would often remark)
“But his courage is perfect! And that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark.”

He would joke with hyenas, returning their stare
With an impendent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
“Just to keep up its spirits,” he said.

+

“As to temper the Jubjub’s a desperate bird,
Since it lives in perpetual passion:
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd -
It is ages ahead of the fashion:”

Lewis Carroll. ‘The hunting of the Snark.’

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“It’s like today when I see kids who go to film schools, and writers who say that by page 13 you have to have this happen, and by page 32 you have to have this happen, and by page 106 it has to be over, blah blah blah. Well, we didn’t have all those rules, and it’s not that we even broke them, because they didn’t exist. Now I think these kids are hampered by rules - not that they can’t think beyond them, just that they don’t go beyond them, because they are axiomatic of what you do. I think there have been too many screenwriting schools and too many books, and people think that’s what they must do. They treat it the same way they treat mathematics, and it’s wrong.

Robert Altman. ‘Altman on Altman.’