The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.

I absolutely don't believe in anything. Full stop. Including luck.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.

Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation, seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.