The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
Certainly I believe in luck. How else do you explain the success of those you don't like?
One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.
The joy of the young is to disobey - but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.
Success had put me on the wrong track and I did not know that there is a kind of success worse than failure, and a kind of failure worth all the success in the world. Neither did I know that the distant friendship of Rainer Maria Rilke would one day console me for having seen his lamp burn without knowing that it was signalling me to go and singe my wings against its flame.
All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.
You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
