The bed must be a beautiful place, not only because you make love there but because you dream there as well.

For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.

I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love.

Jazz is the music of the body.

myself ... is merely an instrument to connect life and a myth

But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.

Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.