The world has become uglier since it began to look into a mirror every day; so let us settle for the mirror image and do without an inspection of the original.

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation.

Let my style capture all the sounds of my time. This should make it an annoyance to my contemporaries. But later generations should hold it to their ears like a seashell in which there is the music of an ocean of mud.

I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.