What is art but the denial of life?

Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I will always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self expression of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes.

But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.

We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

I believe that saying a thing is to keep its virtues and take away its terror.

Nature is the difference between the soul and God.

When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun.