In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God’s masterpiece to be a mistake.
Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
It was the East that should have sent us missionaries.
Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
Respect movements, flee schools.
He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.
You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
Since it’s now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.
Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.
Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the perform-ance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.