Only poets and philosophers see the world as it really is, for only to them is it given to live without illusions. To see clearly is to not act.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

My past is everything I failed to be.

If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.

Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

To have opinions is to sell out to yourself. To have no opinion is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.

From so much self-revising, I’ve destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I’m now my thoughts and not I

At the end of this day there remains what remained yesterday and what will remain tomorrow: the insatiable, unquantifiable longing to be both the same and other.

IT IS BY CHOICE AND NOT BY CHANCES THAT WE CHANGE OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.

It is inhuman to humanize animals

Our job is to leave the world a little better than we found it. Not the same... not worse... better.

The same wall that keeps out your disappointment also keeps out the sunlight of enriching experiences. So let life touch you. The next touch could be the one that turns your life around.

If you're going to paint from photos, make sure you've painted for at least ten years.

Proximity doesn't breed familiarity.

I can't stand satisfaction. To me, greatness comes from that quest for perfection.

There is nothing for me to be sour about. What you got to understand is that I'm a military man. We usually do my shift for four or five years and then you got to move on.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

In fact, every day I'll read a chapter of some art book. I don't know why. It's just a habit.