People are judged continuously everywhere on the most intimate level by the prices on their head. Most of them accept the judgment. It's very hard to have self-respect, or to maintain a state of creativity under these conditions.

These things - the degree of vulnerability, the degree of skill, the degree of the longing to give - are influx all the time, And to lump all that under the word "creativity" assumes something much more static than it is. That's why an artist may be marvelous in her 20s, and be creating automatic crap in her 40s. A writer may be trivial in his 20s, and be writing incredibly in his 50s, because those things are always in flux.

People are judged continuously everywhere on the most intimate level by the prices on their head. Most of them accept the judgment. It's very hard to have self-respect, or to maintain a state of creativity under these conditions.

If I had the money and the drinking capacity, I'd probably live at a roulette table and let my life go to hell.

Our choices are truncated in evil's presence.

To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.

The element of obsession is terribly important for an artist.