You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.

In Holland, everyone is an expert in painting and in tulips.

Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists.

I have no friends, I only have accomplices now. On the other hand, my accomplices are more numerous than my friends: they are the human race.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.