Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.

When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.

You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.

Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.

You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.

The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.