In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.

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.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.