Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter response to a high schooler asking for advice: Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t

Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter response to a high schooler asking for advice: Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them... You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.