Certain kinds of clichés are the narcotics of the middle class.

The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.

Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.

Some books accrete things to themselves like a magnet. The writer risks sterility by subjecting the mysterious power of imagination to the devices of mere comprehension.

The idiotic industry of an ant building his hill in the path of a glacier, and imagining that he is free.

Nothing like the road to rub all the sand out of your soul.

But all I could think of was taking some books to read in jail. I held everybody up, choosing which ones to take.

For invented gods invariably disappoint those who worship them.

Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

It's not funny when you actually get shot, but afterwards, yeah, it's funny.

I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.

She was a girl with a mountain to climb.

If I had to vote for the bill again, I'd vote for it tomorrow.

[Sometimes I] put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters.

The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.

Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent, Of everything you think, And of everything you do, Is for yourself - And there isn’t one.