For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.

Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one's big and second toes; there's work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving.