You don’t make art out of good intentions.
There is no truth. There is only perception.
There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me.
Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?
Doesn’t it seem to you,” asked Madame Bovary, “that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?
If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.
I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything.
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.
Every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.
The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.
The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I’m wandering in countries I can see every detail of – I’m playing a role in the story I’m reading. I actually feel I’m the characters – I live and breathe them.
Mi amistad es como los camellos. En cuanto se pone en marcha ya no hay modo de detenerla.
The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.
How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like street lamps.
This was how they wished they had been: each was creating an ideal into which he was now fitting his past life.
Tutto finisce, tutto passa, l’acqua scorre e il cuore dimentica.
It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually to father them.
The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.
Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.
With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady’s album – and this is always a gallant thing to do, whatever you may say.