He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

The great trues are too important to be new.