Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.

Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.