For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't.

When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself

Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.

I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.

Im merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader.

The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.