Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

The most agonising thing is to drop doubt into a man about his being a reality, three-dimensional - and not some other kind of reality.

And a question stirred within me: What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?

The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods - romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.

What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself - if I want the impossible.

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.