"I have often argued that a poet..." - Quote by H L Mencken

“The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”

“[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.”

“It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.”

“If I could get that girl [Courtney Love] to publish her poetry, the world would change.”

“Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.”

“Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.”

“When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.”

“At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass”

“Men don't mature. Marry a younger one.”