Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.