I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life - reality.

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.