"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
— Flaubert

“I wonder what sort of feeling or reason that man possessed who was the first to pollute his mouth with gore and allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being, claiming as daily food those which until only recently were beings endowed with movement, perception and voice.”
— Plutarch

"I say: a flower! and, out of the forgetfulness where my voice banishes any contour, inasmuch as it is something other than known calyxes, musically arises, an idea itself and fragrant, the one absent from all bouquets."
— Mallarmé

“Being normal is the luxury of being able to survive without really understanding.”
— anonymous (an autistic person)

"The leech’s kiss, the squid’s embrace,
The prurient ape’s defiling touch:
And do you like the human race?
No, not much.”
— Huxley

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.”
— Orwell

"Voice 2: In order never to be alone again.
Voice 1: She is ugliness and beauty. She is like everything that we love today.
Voice 2: The art of the future will be the overturning of situations or nothing.
Voice 3: In the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés!"
— Debord

"I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art."
— Maugham

"A song that a girl belts out while brushing the stairs bowls me over more than a clever cantata. Each to his own taste. I like littleness. I like also the embryonic, the ill-fashioned, the imperfect, the tangled. I prefer rough diamonds, in their dross. And with flaws."
— Dubuffet