Poverty is the great reality. That is why the artist seeks it.

I had been struck by the analogy between neurosis and romanticism. Romanticism was truly a parallel to neurosis. It demanded of reality an illusory world, love, an absolute which it could never obtain, and thus destroyed itself by the dream.

We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.

Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

We are cruel when someone refuses to play the role in which we have cast him. We judge a person only according to his relationship towards us.

Life, religion and art all converge in Bali. They have no word in their language for 'artist' or 'art.' Everyone is an artist.