“do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation”

“Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse—I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web.”

“A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.”

“True Independence and Freedom can only exist in doing whats right.”

“The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.”

“Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.”