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.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

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.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

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

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

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

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 transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

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.