“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.

You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.

The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.

The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.

The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Poetry is a religion with no hope.

Art is science in the flesh.

Something deep in my character allows me to take the hits and get on with trying to win.

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness.