The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.

Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.

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.

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