The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.

The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth.

O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.

In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation.

It is in front of the the paper that the artist creates himself.

Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

In a museum in London there is an exhibit called The Value of Man: a long coffinlike box with lots of compartments where they've put starch phosphorus flour bottles of water and alcohol and big pieces of gelatin. I am a man like that.

Dreams have as much influences as actions.

To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

Paintings are painted with paint, not with ideas.

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them they rhyme.

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.