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I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker’s head if they’re not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it’s bad, the dying to shuck their so...more

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The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.

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And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.

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The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

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As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then th...more

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One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

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One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

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If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstr...more

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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

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An overwhelming curiosity makes me ask myself what their lives might be like. I want to know what they do, where they're from, their names, what they'...more

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Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

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Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

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Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois so that you may be violent and original in your work.

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The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in...more

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You don’t make art out of good intentions.