“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.

We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.

Don’t underestimate the value of irony-it is extremely valuable.

I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.

Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

In art economy is always beauty.

If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.

One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.

You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.

Excellence does not require perfection.

There’s no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.