I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.

Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.

There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.