“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”

“Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.”

“Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.”

“I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.”

“The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.”

“Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!”

“I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.”

“The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.”

“The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.”

“So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.”

“Be still when you have nothing to say when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”

“It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.”

“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”

“People always make war when they say they love peace.”

“Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.”