"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."

"Don't try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."

"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language."

"The needs of society determine its ethics."

"Lady you bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, And there is such confusion in my powers."

"The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

"But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves."

"I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead."