A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

• The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
• If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
• Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.
• What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
• Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
• Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.
• I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
• What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
• I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.
• Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.