...he shrunk more and more from the realities of life and above all from the society of his day which he regarded with an ever growing horror,--a detestation which had reacted strongly on his literary and artistic tastes; he refused, as far as possible, to have anything to do with pictures and books whose subjects were in any way connected with modern existence.

Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.

Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.

Menacing lines of black tomorrows on the horizon.

Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.

I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove... that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.