Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

What's wrong with this world is, it's not finished yet. It is not completed to that point where man can put his final signature to the job and say, "It is finished. We made it, and it works.

Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.