I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

He consorted with prostitutes and poets...and with persons even worse.

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

People think that I've committed myself to idealism, to solipsism, or to doctrines of the cabala, because I've used them in my tales. But really I was only trying to see what could be done with them. On the other hand, it might be argued that if I use them it's because I was feeling an affinity to them. Of course, that's true.

There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.

We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights.