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 what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal.

It's the pleasure of picking up the brush and seeing what happens.

Imagination is the voice of the daring.

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.