“This joy you feel is life.”

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

The way to resume is to resume. It is the only way. To resume.

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn’t learned much.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything.

Art is the pulse of a nation.

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

I wish that I was where I am.