There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.