...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.

The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.