You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters — all that matters, really is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women , art, success — is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.

In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.

God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.

Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life.

To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.