“Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.”

Give me two hours a day of activity, and I’ll take the other twenty-two in dreams.

Let my enemies devour each other.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

Everyone should eat hashish, but only once.

Everyone should eat hashish, but only once.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments

For me, love must be ugly, looks must be divine, and death must be beautiful.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

Many people do not reach their eighties because they spend too much time in their forties.

There comes a moment in every person’s life when they realise they adore me.

The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad.

Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it.

When I paint, the Sea Roars Others Splash about in the bath.

The complexity of immigration as an issue begins with a basic human trait: we are reluctant to share.

In the beginning, I took on every opportunity because I was so determined to get my name and music out there. You can get your sleep, but honestly, your brain needs a break, too, and so many people forget that.

Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.

Men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.

Anything played wrong twice in a row is the beginning of an arrangement.