A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.

The true comic muse is the one with tears running down under her laughing mask.

My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.

Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber.

Whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.

Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.