hash quotes

The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose,that, I fear, can seldom be mine. 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. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

- Herman Melville
  Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne,  Jun.