“To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to 'express' the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything.”

“The difference between poetry and prose is not one of surface qualities, or form, or mode of expression, but of essence. The state of mind in which poetry originates must either seek poetic expression or it must not be expressed.”

“Far from securing order, terror intensifies disorder and social disintegration. Terror, the most extreme form of power, is the least effective, and rulers employ it to the detriment of their own authority. **The Rules of Chaos (1969), p 48”

“That's not it. That's not it at all. You always have a tendency to add. But one must be able to subtract too. It's not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate. That's the way life is.”

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.”

“The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending; death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms which we have loved.”

“Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.”

“It is always delightful to have one's feelings expressed by some one else in language of enthusiasm one might oneself be afraid to employ.”

“Writing as a process of personal expression is an effort to provide meaning to life. Whether it is in the form of poetry which gives a touch of beauty to what we think or feel, or novels or stories as imaginative imitations of life. Whether it will succeed or fail, at least the writing will make us wiser in interpreting our own lives.”

“How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.”