Busting Out All Over

In my attempt to get inside Prof. Horwitz's head and win round 2 (I didn't do as well as I'd hoped in his Con Law class last semester), I looked up and read some of his published articles. This was my favorite sentence, from "Religious Tests in the Mirror: The Constitutional Law and Constitutional Etiquette in Judicial Nominations" (15 WMMBRJ 75):

It would seem that the Religious Test Clause is busting out all over.

He's too smart not to know exactly what he was writing there. I'm glad to see that irreverence is alive and well, even in the stuffy world of legal scholarship.

Dreaming and Doing

From the book I'm reading, Coromandel!:

The trouble is that those who dream, don't do, and those who do, don't dream... Love, war, peace, the beauties of repose -- it's always the same! Passionate love lyrics are written by nervous little fellows who've crawled home every blameless night to their shrewish wives.

Applying this to writing, do you think it's true? Do you think it would be good for all writers to go and experience their subject before being allowed to write about it? Or do you think outside perspective is valuable?

If you had to choose one or the other, which would it be?