A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all.

The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.