[To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw - to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer - if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions - we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.

I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.

To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures - to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name - I needed movie companions as drunkards need…

He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girl…

You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire - Come o…

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and…