As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

I don't argue with my enemies; I explain to their children.

Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.

One can fool life for a long time, but in the end it always makes us what we were intended to be.