There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy..

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fri….

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for go….

My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American..

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only..

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness..

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously..

But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here..

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something alrea….

Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the l….

Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adj….

Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle..

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it..

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm..

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer..

Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong - it can end everything..

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of def….

There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such over−brimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the Madonnas the s….

I wanted to die; I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted ….

The waking mind, you see, is the least serviceable in the arts..

I am a free man―and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving ….