Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of