It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.

I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.