Others

O may my heart’s truth

When All My Five and Country Senses See.

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did His dictation.

I learned three things in Zurich during thewar. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re eithera revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re notyou might as well be an artist as anything else.Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you mightas well be a revolutionary . . . I forget the thirdthing.

I hate writing, but I love having written.

[ On James Joyce :] An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to publicnotice to be universally recognized.

I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir ThomasBrowne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.

The world is so full of a number of things,

There is but one art—to omit! O if I knew how to omit, I would ask no other knowledge.

There is but one art—to omit! O if I knew how to omit, I would ask no other knowledge.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

I know of only one rule: style cannot be too clear , too simple .

I know of only one rule: style cannot be too clear , too simple .

Un roman est un miroir qui se promène sur une grande route .

In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born.

[ Referring to film producer Samuel Goldwyn :] Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.

I’ve got a soul: don’t tell me I haven’t. Cut me up and you can’t find it. Cut up a steam engine and you can’t find the steam. But, by George, it makes the engine go.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns as [Samuel] Johnson did when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit.

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.

We do not seek for truth in the abstract. . . .

As for me, I am a watercolor.

Set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel.

Only rhythm brings about a poetic short-circuit and transforms the copper into gold, the words into life.

Your Lordship will probably recollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words “And this also shall pass away.”