I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us.

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.

Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive.

The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.

I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.