Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.

We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

Cluster together like stars!