We must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how not to interfere.

I have lived among enough painters and around studios to have had all the theories - and how contradictory they are - rammed down my throat. A man has to have a gizzard like an ostrich to digest all the brass-tacks and wire nails of modern art theories.

Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

Freedom is a very great reality, but it means above all things, freedom from lies.

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

Only in a novel are all things given full play.