Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

I confess, I do not believe in time.

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.