A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.