“The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.”

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

To be simple is no small matter.

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

There are three thing in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.

Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

There is no truth. There is only perception.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.