“I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies.”

I have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.

Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.

Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.

I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.

Today’s sensitive male has learned to share in open frank discussions about relationships like, “Where the hell did you get a crazy idea like that? You been reading Redbook again?”

This time, there have been a lot of interesting discussions about the subject matter, and I’ve had a good time talking about it. And in some of the cases, I’m not just signing books – I’m showing slides and talking about the work

I’ve talked to many individuals who want to discuss their problems. But they don’t really have problems. They have chosen to live in the wrong direction. They don’t need a solution. They need a new direction.

Sex has become one of the most discussed subjects of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend nothing else exists.

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

The conversation between your fingers and someone else’s skin. This is the most important discussion you can ever have.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

I don’t feel one’s personal medical condition is everybody’s business. It just isn’t something you advertise, and it’s not open to discussion.