The genius of rock music is that it matched the cultural hysteria around it.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night.

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger.

We need time to lose interest in things.

Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.