In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.