One's own vanities and humiliations I find a delicious subject for conversation. Things said of me behind my back I don't enjoy, and don't listen to them.

Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches.

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

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.

It is the dread of something happening, something unknown and dreadful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out.

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.

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn't a God.