Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

Musicians are very mysterious and wonderful people to me; I don't know how they do it.

Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror? It's just an ocean of horror.

What we need is progress with an escape hatch.

Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the conflicts, the struggles, the strains that I felt in my own family.