Harry Crews

Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.

He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried it around with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure.

What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.

Survival is triumph enough.