As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning, . . . [then] they fall down the curtains.

Life swarms with innocent monsters.

Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by a desire to change his bed.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

Genius is simply childhood, rediscovered by an act of will.