Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.

My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.

Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.