The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

No se piensa en nada; las horas pasan. Uno se pasea inmovil por paises que cree ver, y su pensamiento, enlazandose a la ficcion, se recrea en los detalles o sigue el hilo de las aventuras. Se identifica con los personajes; parece que somos nosotros mismos los que participamos bajo sus pieles.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it.

So long as there is gold underneath, who cares about the dust on top? Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!

Jao onome tko nije poželio srdžbe iz tragedija, tko ne zna napamet ljubavne strofe da ih ponavlja na mjesečni! Lijepo je živjeti tako u vječitoj ljepoti, odijevati se poput kraljeva, gajiti strasti u njihovu najviše obliku, ljubiti ljubavlju koju je genij ovjekovječio.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.