If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

You’re not exactly up for the Humanitarian of the Year award, so save your altruism for someone who can't see through you like cellophane.

I'm tired of 'pretentious' just being used as an excuse to dismiss anything that fucking expects you to have a brain.

I will take all my rights! Can you deliver them to my house?

don’t be like so many writers,don’t be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don’t be dull and boring andpretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don’t add to that.don’t do it.

I don't use big words to show off because it's ostentatious.

The height of cleverness is in one's ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all.

I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it

Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed from the front of the house. "What an egregious insult to good taste.