A number of things in Dhalgren are just meant to function as mysteries. They're mysteries when the book begins, and they're mysteries when the book ends.

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s.

The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

Babes, I am so bored here that I don't think, since I've come, I've ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence.

The truth is always multiplex.

Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

Ambition like a liquid ruby stains.

The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.

Don't go chattering to the stars if you're going to do it with your eyes closed.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules, Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

Rarely do you walk down the street doing anything that my grandparent's generation did. And half of that comes with the technology advances.

To me Moses is all men grown to gigantic proportions.

Do not desert me when I need you most. And if we can't go on together, let's retrace our steps as quickly as we can.

When I was a kid my dad would say, "Emo, do you believe in the Lord?" I'd say, "Yes!" He'd say, "Then stand up and shout Hallelujah!" So I would ... and I'd fall out of the roller coaster.

Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.

I am not one of the great journalists of my time.

Don't bother asking God for answers about life. Most likely you're asking the wrong questions.

Eventually, out of sheer will of never wanting to get a job or go to college, I found my way into doing music full-time.

I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.