Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

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.

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.

It's the pleasure of picking up the brush and seeing what happens.

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.