Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.

Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.

To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage.

I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.