“In the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.”

In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets’ nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.

Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation.

You pause and attend: the heart beats in your chest; outside, the trees are thick with new leaves, a swallow dips over them, the light moves, people are going about their business.

I’m good at reading people.

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it’s funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.

Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist.

He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights.

No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it’s a kind of risky trade.

To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully.

It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life.

Hold’em is a game of calculated aggression. If your cards are good enough for you to call a bet, they are good enough to raise with.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself.

Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself.