I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.

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.

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

Success as I see it is a result, not a goal.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Everything is there: the love of Art.