"I have often thought that the sole regret of the transformed butterfly must be that it can only live for a day."

"Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence."

"A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere -- and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves."

"If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul, you haven't experienced poetry."

"It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneli…"