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

I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art—that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

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

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

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.

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

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.