Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!

It is this admirable and immortal instinct for beauty which causes us to regard the earth and its spectacles as a glimpse, a correspondence of the beyond.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Always be drunk ... Get drunk militantly. Just get drunk.

The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.