I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality.

My philosophy? I'm always right and you are wrong.

The heart was made to be broken.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.