"What's the matter ? You don't look like yourself !" "It's because I am so delighted, Mamma ! Do you know, now all Russia knows of me !"

"What is thought ? where does it dwell ? how is it formed ?"

"The white cat was a healer and a nurse. She destroyed poison, counteracted irritation and strengthened people's powers of recuperation."

"The same processes the alchemists employed in contemplation of the transmutation of metals can be used to bring union to the self."

"Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach, waiting for a gift from the sea."

"It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me."

"The fleeting and poignant desire to hear no more, to see no more, to remain silent and motionless. Crazy dreams of solitude."

"He was a tone-poet. He seemed to live upon music, the moody food of imagination."

"My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom."

"The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own."

[Tableaux / Paintings]

"The shepherd prince's pursuit stands for the human heart's pursuit of Beauty, or Truth, Happiness, Love, Light."

[Essays and documentaries on Hieronymus Bosch's work]

"Evenings on the way home he gets angry at some change, arrives in a rage and promises himself: I will stay at home; work, nothing but work"

[Documentaries, talks and analyses on Paul Cezanne's works]

"Your sensitive, responsive soul is seeking to escape from the maze of... Yes, the struggle is terrific, titanic. But do not lose heart !"

"For Goethe the flower is so much alive that it speaks and warns him; and he solves the problem differently from either Tennyson or Basho."

"Let me say to you now that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual."

{Alexandre Cabanel (1823 – 1889)}

“O Egypt, Egypt, of your reverent deeds only stories will survive, and they will be incredible to your children !"

"Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old."

"One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that ?"

"Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet."

[Extracts] "The value of solitude — one of its values — is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within..."