Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

...language is never innocent.

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

The photographic image... is a message without a code.

We don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Only notes that are different can harmonize. The same is true with people.

It's good to know that there's a fine line between an "outfit" and a "getup."

We lived in Yorkville until 1940, at which point we moved into the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens.

The reward is in doing, but doing without expecting anything...doing unselfishly.

I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.

A new presidential poll reveals that Democrats have the edge among voters under 30. The good news for Republicans is that there's only six people under 30 who actually vote.

Picture you upon my knee, just tea for two and two for tea.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.

The way I've been with drink and drugs suggests I have a tendency to get addicted to things.