“Lovemaking is the consolation for living in the body, just as art is the consolation for living in the world.”
“I had ways of consoling myself. Yes, there was food but there was beyond food, this idea I had of an oversoul of loneliness. A connectedness among the world's lonely that I could turn to when I was very low. There was a delicious romance in being utterly alone, & I told myself I was nobler for it, & that there was a purpose to my solitude, O there must be.”
“Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)”
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
“Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself”