I felt free and chained at the same time – like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.
We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.
I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn’t. Nobody can write the absolute truth.
The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
In every man’s heart there is anchored a little schooner.
The sordid qualities imputed to the enemy are always those which we recognize as our own and therefore rise to slay, because only through projection do we realize the enormity and horror of them.
All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions, pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.
What is an artist? He’s a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos.
No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink.
In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights.
Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.
The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we’re passing one another without a look of recognition.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever had a woman eat an apple while you were doing it. Well, you can imagine how that affects you.
To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one’s threshold.