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There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.

The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds, by means of what are commonly termed par excellence the exact sciences, may then, with the fair white wings of imagination, hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.

The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.