“From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.Whe...”

“I see at last that all the knowledgeI wrung from the darknessthat the darkness flung meIs worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the dark...”

“A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”

“It's ugly, but is it art?”

“When I was young and miserable and prettyAnd poor, I'd wishWhat all girls wish: to have a husband,A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wishIs womanish:That the boy putting groceries in my car...”

“Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statue...”

“The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”

“But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.”

“The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly.”

“Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.”

“I started this dirty quote business when I noticed that I only tend to read authors when their quotes convince me of wit and style. In a world overflowing with bad literature and corrupted product-...”

“I think theres a ton of fear in the perception of romance in part because theres something very realistic in great romance namely, that women have the right to demand relationships that are based ...”

“Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.”

“There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much...”

“Metaphysics... is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot...”