Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.

Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.