I think too much is known about me already. I think biographical information can get in the way of the reading experience. The interchange between the reader and the work. For example, I know far too much about Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut. Because I know as much as I do about their personal lives, I can't read their work without this interjecting itself. So if I had it to do over, I'd probably go the way of J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon. And just stay out of it altogether and let all the focus be on the work itself and not on me.
Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.
I'd like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself.
You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way.
I've done films over the years that basically no one saw. And I'm thankful that some of them haven't been seen.
Sometimes I'm fascinated with how famous my work could be while I'm not so famous.
I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.
A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
Music looks very formidable to people outside of it and it looks like it's this realm of spooky genius.
Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaning of a passage in his poem. He replied, 'God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows.'
Everywhere I go, I find that writers are treated as if they are invisible, as if they don't matter.
Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
I always thought of myself as a very, very obscure artist.
Making a film confusing does not make it intelligent.
One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I cannot follow their intentions. I can tell at a glance what Fabritius is doing, but I am spending my life trying to find out what Rembrandt was up to.
It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work.
There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.
The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.
Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
My most cryptic, strange songs might be my most personal, but that isn't how people are going to receive them, because they don't know the code.
Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
