Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.

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

Perfumes, colours and sounds echo one another.

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.

There is no dream of love, however ideal it may be, which does not end up with a fat, greedy baby hanging from the breast.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.