“To break the pentameter, that was the first heaven.”

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.

And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass.

Glance is the enemy of vision.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance, poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good.

Genius, is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

It’s hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

It sounded too contrived and having to follow devised parameters to create art.

Box office figures are not something that can decide the success of a film on its own, but they are one of the many yardsticks that help me measure how well a film has been received.