Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

We design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are stupid. They take drugs. They get drunk and do all the wrong things in life. I just played it straight.

Here's the thing: I had never been to Boston, my whole life. Probably because I'm a Yankee fan.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

You know, catching the knuckleball, it's like trying to catch a fly with a chopstick.

I always like being surprised and sort of caught off guard by other people's work. So it doesn't cause me any anxiety to explore different avenues.

It was a strangely disorienting feeling, to have something you'd relied on for so long start to change, like finding out that gravity no longer worked on Mondays.

Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.

I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself.