It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past.

Talent--that is to say, the ability to see the world in a unique way--matures and grows in isolation.

Art cannot progress by sticking to what is already familiar.

The age of sages is past; the age of specialists has come.

The public, regardless of its social origin, likes, above all, that which is easily accessible.

Environment grinds us, forces us to adjust, and--consciously or not--kills our most precious possession: that something which enables us to speak with ourselves and with God.

The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.