I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.

Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.

If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.