What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity.

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things