Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 169

People who write "mawning" think the language has a true "reality" off the paper. The difference between a good writer and a bad one - or, the difference between a writer (take your choice out of the millions around) and an artist - is that the former thinks the words are pictures, and so on. He thinks they "represent" things, and take their place. The artist is a slave to the fact (it takes a great while to realize this) that they represent nothing, and you pay homage to them on their terms. This is one of the reasons artists are so politically decadent, right? There are the words, which will not come forth to greet anybody.