A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong wi…

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth:but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, u…