Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.

although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.

He had a mania for washing and disinfecting himself. . . . For him the only danger came from the microbes that attacked the body. He had not studied the microbe of conscience which eats into the soul.

The truly faithless one is the one who makes love to only a fraction of you. And denies the rest.

My first vision of earth was water veiled. I am of the race of men and women who see all things through this curtain of sea and my eyes are the color of water.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.