The element of obsession is terribly important for an artist.

Our choices are truncated in evil's presence.

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.

That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name.

Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera.

We have to be realistic about the brutal demands a money culture puts on the psyche, and there is a great cost to this in terms of creativity. Look at the state of people at 65. How many of them become creative after having to survive in the money culture?

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