“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”

“When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.”

“Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she'd made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of. Some spoke of a...”

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

“The festivity had reached that apogee of joy when you face the happy fate of being crushed to death.”

“Paris was all so... Parisian. I was captivated by the wonderful wrongness of it all - the unfamiliar fonts, the brand names in the supermarket, the dimensions of the bricks and paving stones. Child...”

“Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the ...”

“I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.”

“But that woman is an encyclopedia!Of all vices, ancient and modern, and terribly interesting to leaf through!”

“A strange girl, all phosphorous and cantharides, burning with every desire! And burning with every vice!”

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered...it is not merely the vices that are let lo...”