“One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul.”

It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

How she hated words, always coming between her and her life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the live-sap out of living things.

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.

Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.

We fucked a flame into being.

You’re always begging things to love you, he said, as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them–

What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn’t mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.

There is no pornography without a secrecy.

Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.

Nobody knows you. You don’t know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

What the eye doesn’t see and the mind doesn’t know, doesn’t exist.

Recklessness is almost a man’s revenge on his woman.

All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

Anybody that I ever dealt with knows that I’m a very focused individual, and when it comes to my work and what I do, you might have to play the back burner to that.

I know this won’t always be a good deal for me I make it anyway.

Life is the same. It would be the same thing if I were still working at Starbucks, having to deal with a manager, and a shift manager. This is a job.

From the beginning, I’ve had to juggle and weigh the silly things people say – and I’ve learnt that they’re meaningless, and they’re mostly inaccurate. So I don’t worry about it, because there’s nothin’ for me to deal with.

Despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value.

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience.

I’m working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.

November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of having to deal with unrequited love.