
“[I] pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.”
Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
“[I] pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.”
Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)
Pride and Joy, co-written with William "Mickey" Stevenson and Norman Whitfield.
Song lyrics, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow (1962)
On his musical work
Ebony interview (2007)
"Nothing's a Gift"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)
A comment recalled by János Plesch in János, the Story of a Doctor (1947), p. 207. Also quoted in Einstein: the Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 118 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1940s
Variant: "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge." From The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false. This book attributes it to Einstein and the Humanities (1979) by Dennis Ryan, p. 125, but Calaprice seems to have copied it wrong, since searching "inside the book" on this book's amazon page http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Humanities-Contributions-Dennis-Ryan/dp/0313253803 using the word "gift" shows that p. 125 actually gives the same quote as in János, the Story of a Doctor.