“Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.”

“The rain was still crashing down, angrily machine-gunning the large windows; it poured through the gutters up in the tower and funneled along the flat roof, sounding like footsteps on the ceiling.”

“Art makes the spirit soar. And when the spirit is lifted, life follows.”

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”

“Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”