You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
Art never improves, but . . .
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. One needs the enemy. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Somewhere on the other side of despair.