Characters carrying the playwright's disapproval is a un-Shakespearian burden.

The writer as boxer says he develops by, "learning from everyone who'll spar with me.

President-elect Lincoln to his confidants: "The people of the South do not know us. They are not allowed to receive Republican papers down there.

He loved his family, his friends, his writing, his painting; he knew their flaws, but they neither surprised nor embittered him.

People HAVE used me. But it don't matter I don't let it change me. – Mohammed Ali

One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.