Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan’s deflation is another’s inflation.
A man’s truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.
When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you’ll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Art is science in the flesh.
A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.