Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.