“Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.”

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

Faith is the force of life.

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

Rest, nature, books, music – such is my idea of happiness.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

Love those you hate you.

Don’t seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer.

My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

I’m gonna write from personal experience, from emotion, from whatever the hell I’m feeling that day.

Indulging in the pleasures of creation.

Well, write poetry, for God’s sake, it’s the only thing that matters.

Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.

My bedroom is my sanctuary. It’s like a refuge, and it’s where I do a fair amount of designing – at least conceptually, if not literally.

All of the young people – the artsy people, people who get overlooked because they’re weird or they don’t have hype around them – need to get some shine.

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.