In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
Starvation, not sin, is the parent of modern crime.
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.