Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.

You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!