Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible.

I think that art has the ability to capture people's imaginations and make them think that more is possible.

First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I'm afraid that was my attitude, too. It's terribly easy to get used to someone else's poverty if you're living a middle-class life in it. But after a while, I saw it wasn't possible to accept it, and I also didn't want to.

The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.

With beauty, I just try to get as much sleep as possible. I might have a nice hot bath and moisturise with coconut oil.