The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self.

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader--it is never quite oneself. 2) I usually hate the sight of my handwriting--it lives too much and I dislike its life--I mean by "lives," of course, betrays too much!

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.