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.

Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.

It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.

[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.