I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation.

Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.

The artist's work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.