"Against Nature" Quotes

The artist excels in nothing but himself.

I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will leave behind me as many images as possible; then, suddenly, I will shut myself up like a chrysalis.

He mastered the art of suspending the fitness of things, of floating isolated details in a bath of moral gum.

He finds inspiration only in disaster, in order to force catastrophe to be creative in communicating emotion.

He was tormented by the desire to inflict cruel and original psychological suffering upon himself.

In literature, as in everything, there is only one meaning, but this meaning can take on multiple forms.

His personality was ceaselessly directing the exact opposite of its intentions, performing actions of which his conscious being disapproved.

He was constantly under illusions as to the arts; he had no ear for criticism, no eye for the strengths and weaknesses of any style whatsoever.

His mind was obstinate, deformed by pedantry, greedy for novelty, its certainties persisting in the face of any evidence to the contrary.