Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle, Hershel Parker (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.630, Northwestern University Press
