it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

In any case, you can't have effective allegory in times when people are swept this way and that by momentary convictions, because everyone will read it differently. You can't indicate moral values when morality changes with what is being done, because there is no accepted basis of judgment. And you cannot show the operation of grace when grace is cut off from nature or when the very possibility of grace is denied, because no one will have the least idea of what you are about.

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

...a writer without authority? Impossible. as Kenneth Burke says, creation implies authority in the sense of originator....

...people quote proverbs without realizing they're really in awe of the authority of their truth and the power of their expression...

Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.