You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not - there is no weakness in that.
I feel that if I kept it secret it might grow in my mind (as poisonous things grow in the dark) and take its place with the other terrible thoughts that gnaw me
Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.