She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

Truth is what most contradicts itself.

Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work.

No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine

Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.