An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.