“A feather of a hawk was bound
Bound around my neck
A poultice made of fig
The eager little vultures pecked”

“Thrice round her neck my eager arms I threw;
Thrice from my empty arms the phantom flew,
Swift as the wind, with momentary flight,
Swift as a fleeting vision of the night.”

“Under my cloak, a fig for the King!”

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

“At daybreak I found on my sculptor's turntable a little mischievous form [a small plaster form of Impish Form, Arp made in 1949], alert and somewhat obese, with a stomach like a lute. It seemed to me like an imp. I called it that. And all of a sudden one day this little character, this imp, through a Venezuelan medium, found itself to be the father of a giant [Arp enlarged it]. This giant son resembles its father like an egg resembles another egg, a fig another fig, a bell another bell.”

“A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose.”

“I will neither resurrect the past nor return.
Sleep, Romeo, Juliet, on your headrest of stone feathers.
I won't raise your bound hands from the ashes.
Let the cat visit the deserted cathedrals,
its pupil flashing on the altars. Let an owl
nest on the dead ogive.”

“He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck.”

“"Now, you have to tighten your belts, because we, your leaders, mis-spent your hard-earned money." Know what would make tightening my belt a little easier? If I could tighten it around Jesse Helms' scrawny little chicken-neck.”