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

"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 you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments."

"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."

"The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens."

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it."

"Books are my art. The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books."

"Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people."

"I suppose that by being absent from the music business, it appeared that I just dropped out, but really I never did. I was continuously working and doing various things."