Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.

The horror of our history has purged me of opinions.

Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

If you would learn a thing, straightway declare yourself a professor of it!

All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.