Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.

No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.

Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.

For me, the single word "God" suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque.

I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors; I will not go looking for keys.

My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.

No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.