It's very much related to the American tycoon. To William Randolph Hearst, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, that whole stratum of American acquisitive evil. Monopolistic, acquisitive evil. Ugly evil. The ugly American. The ugly American at his ugly worst. That's exactly what it is.

So I had a choice between going to a jail or going to a bughouse like a nice young middle-class student. So I chose to go to a very polite mental hospital. When I left eight months later, they said, 'You were never psychotic. You were just an average neurotic.'

The Rolling Stones were an inkling towards an appreciation of the unity of music, dance and words. Any of the black R&B people who had a stage show that involved dancing, music and words did the same thing, except that I thought Jagger's words were good, his music was good and his dancing was good. I spoke to him about Blake and tried to get him to sing [William] Blake's The Grey Monk, to use his words as lyrics. He didn't do it. In the end, I did it myself.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

This is the same notion - Catholic exorcism, psychotherapy, shamanistic practices - getting to the moment when whatever it was gained access. And also to the name of the spirit. Just to know that it's the Ugly Spirit. That's a great step. Because the spirit doesn't want its name to be known.

I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.

I am learning by the week, but my poesy is still not my own. New rhyme, new me me me in words. I am not all this carven rhetoric.