It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.

No matter how accomplished one might be in any branch of learning or art, one would have to be condemned to hell, if on where not endowed with th five cardinal virtues of Confucius-benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and fidelity

I could wish for nothing more than to die for a childish dream in which I truly believed.

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.

I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills.

..he understood far more deeply than anyone else the loneliness that lurked beneath his jaunty mask.