I have heard unsavory rumors about you and the umbrella-maker's daughter

Isn't there someone kind enough to come strangle me in my sleep?

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.

As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out.