Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures.

One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.

We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!

It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body!