The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.