America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.

And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

To know Paris is to know a great deal.

The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'