Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge.

Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment.

Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.

Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.