...never have I subscribed to the doctrine of willful rejection of the world or its visual image. To the non-objectivist this act of impiety may be shockingly impure, but God, I have no desire to be either hollow or sterile.

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed. And then came the next shock. We had to realize that the people that did this were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.