“It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I’ve devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.”

It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.

I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

I’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.

Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.

From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.

I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don’t know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.

The soul exceeds its circumstances.

Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.

Art requires so much patience, don’t let time-lapse trick you.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

My art is capable of liberating man from the tyranny of the practical, rational world.

Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.

Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.