Wealth and wisdom are seldom combined, for the person who achieves one no longer desires the other.
It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
Painting can feign reality without having seen it.
Don't say mourning. It's too psychoanalytic. I'm not mourning. I'm suffering.
. . . language is never innocent.
Tragedy isn't getting something, or failing to get it; it's losing something you already have.
There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.
None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full.
Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!