People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.

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

What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

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!