“Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.”

Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

I’m inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It’s not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!

The man-at-arms is the only man.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

It’s such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string – when one slips off, all the rest follow.

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

The greatest victory is defeat.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population — the intelligent ones or the fools?

Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.

To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

I’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.

You know, and we did – 20-year hiatus we had – and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won’t do.

There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We’re using those things – but we’re not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last – the power to refuse our consent.

Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.

The poet, like the lover, is a person unable to reconcile what he knows with what he feels. His peculiarity is that he is under a certain compulsion to do so.

I had studied the violin to a certain amount of success. At some point, I realized that I didnt really like the violin. I was only doing it because I could, and I was good at it, and everyone was encouraging me. But I didnt have a great love for it.

But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.