“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

“Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find...”

“LearningTo believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”

“In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot.”

“Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.”

“The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.”

“A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses...”

“Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.- Yes; it's a funny habit.- No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, howe...”

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

“Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”