I didn't dare to think of anything then except the "facts." To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being.

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.