Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

The imaginary is what tends to become real.

How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.

To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!

To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.

It will in the end, be admitted that everything, in effect is an image and that the least object which has no symbolic role assigned to it is capable of standing for absolutely anything.

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.