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

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.

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.

Seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.

I’m back – now watch this!’ It all boils down to the music. The mask is a slight theme for people to enjoy, and it adds mystery.

The ‘Doom’ thing is to be able to come at things with a different point of view. I decided the mask would just add to the mystique of the character as well as make Doom stand out.

A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity.

The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Nobody can guarantee the real terms per pupil funding increase. In the Labour party’s manifesto we know the figures don’t add up.

Yoga adds years to your life and life to your years.

To add insult to injury, most Americans never knew that, and most Mexicans have never forgotten it.