“One must not mistake majority for truth.”

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.

Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.

Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.

Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.

They say eyes don’t lie, but I mistook the distance in your eyes for depth.

Arts can save children, no matter what’s going on in their homes.

You say: you are mourning a man that could not love you. Full stop. Cover the last word. There’s the truth.

When it comes to politics, I believe you have to cut the cake so that everybody gets a piece, but at the same time, you have to keep in mind that somebody has to make the cake.

I know that my son was an honest person and an honest artist, and what he gave from himself through his art was the depth of his humanity.

You are all either a manifestation of my light or shadows.

There’s a difference between being in love and being in love with the idea of love.

Isn’t there too much to say about what you are too scared to say.