“Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page.”

“The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”

“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

“This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.”

“Part of what attracts us to artists is their otherness, their refusal to conform, their big middle finger stuck up in the face of Society, such that their very a- or immorality is what makes their art artistic rather than academic.”