The artist lives in an atmosphere of perpetual failure.

Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, 'Hey, man, the ball game's up'.

Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.

We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Becauwse we really don't lov what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems - if you really loved it - you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. ... Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love Nothing is allowed to die in a society of storytelling people.

Men to whom God is dead worship one another.

The writer's job is to get naked.

God love the car. It has shown the naked heart that lives in all of us. Man invented the car but the car -- out of pure malevolence no doubt -- changed the history of the world by reinventing man.