The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to read more

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all read more

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to read more

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark read more

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

I invent nothing, I rediscover.