I have lived half of my life in Paris, not the half the made me but the half in which I made what I made. - Gertrude Stein

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.

A master-piece … may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.