The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.

There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs.

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth.

I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed.