Digression

Digression is the soul of wit.  Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.

-- Ray Douglas Bradbury (22 August 1920 - 5 June 2012) American -- fantasy, horror, and science fiction writer, Coda, Afterword to the 1979 edition of Fahrenheit 451 (1979)