Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.
Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.
One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.