In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.

Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind we will not like.

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.