To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

You, oh mature ones, keep company solely with other mature ones, and your maturity is so mature that it can only chum up with maturity!

Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it.

The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.

Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.

Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.

I could have protested of course, who says I couldn't--I could have risen to my feet at any moment, walked up to them, and--no matter how difficult it would have been--made it abundantly clear that I was not seventeen but thirty. I could have--yet I couldn't because I didn't want to, the only thing I wanted was to prove that I was not an old-fashioned boy!