“I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?"Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.”

“I heard from clear across the city, over the Hudson in the Jersey yards, one fierce whistle of a locomotive which took me to a train late at night hurling through the middle of the West, its iron shriek blighting the darkness. One hundred years before, some first trains had torn through the prairie and their warning had congealed the nerve. "Beware," said the sound. "Freeze in your route. Behind this machine comes a century of maniacs and a heat which looks to consume the earth." What a rustling those first animals must have known.”

“Aukeman quotes Norman Mailer:"No wonder then that these have been the years of conformity and depression. A stench of fear has come out of every pore of American life and we suffer from a collective failure or nerve. The only courage, with rare exceptions, that we have been witness to, has been the isolated courage of isolated people." Welcome to Painterland (2016) Chapter 4, p.108”

“Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.”

“The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.”

“In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.”

“With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.”

“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”

“I think it's bad to talk about one's present work for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.”

“As many people die from an excess of timidity as from bravery.”

“Boredom slays more of existence than war.”