It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.