twenty-seven years and one million words
I built a TV stand this morning. It took three wonderful hours (the better part of the latter one going to a change Mari asked for at the two hour mark). Now our TV is off the floor for the first time in more than a year.
Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.
—T.S. Eliot