Sadness is a vice.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.

One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.