Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

... everyone's free to embark on either a great clipper or a little fishing boat. An artist is an explorer who oughtn't to shrink from anything: it doesn't matter whether he goes to the left or the right -- his goal sanctifies all.

When they are among us cats are angels

Life is a slate where all our sins are written; from time to time we rub the sponge of repentance over it so we can begin sinning again.

living for oneself is a bad thing. The keenest intellectual pleasure comes from being able to return to the self after being absent from it for a spell. But living all the time inside the self, that most tyrannical, demanding and capricious of companions - no, one shouldn't do it.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

A cigar numbs sorrow and fills the solitary hours with a million gracious images.