A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.

Punctuality is the thief of time

The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music - his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting - that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.