But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.

The morality of art is in its very beauty.

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.