It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Love demands infinitely less than friendship.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart.

Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.

Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

Nothing is whole, not for too damned long. The world is half night.

Our mistakes won't irreparably damage our lives unless we let them.

No, I was never one of those positive people who believes he can have whatever he sets his sights on. I just kept working at it.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.

You might be a redneck if you've ever stolen toilet paper from a public restroom.

I'd liked my first record, it was autobiographical and beautiful.

How do you make yourself not like someone?

Death is not a mystery; it is very simple and clear! It is the life which is the complex and the mystic one!

Are you winning the battle against materialism?