There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.

As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.