“I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man — makes for mixtures.”
– Donald Barthelme, “The Art of Fiction N° 66,” The Paris Review 80 (Summer 1981)

[See F. Scott Fitzgerald.]