“Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.”

I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.

Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

In art economy is always beauty.

If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.

One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.

You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.

Excellence does not require perfection.

There’s no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.

You heard it here first!’ Who cares? That’s nothing but a vanity play. If it’s not right, it’s garbage.

It is a voice that cuts you like a razor, but you can still hear the innocence in it, a claim to purity that soars out of the garbage of her throat, carrying evil harmonies.

Most of what was released has always been garbage and some has been able to get through and last.

Would you really dig into yesterday’s garbage to make tonight’s meal? Do you dig into yesterday’s mental garbage to create today’s experiences?

In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers. But when I get home, the only thing I have power over is the garbage.

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It’s like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.