A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

The mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent... . There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.

Art must hurt. First, it must hurt the artist himself; the artist must experience pain before he creates. Otherwise, he won't be able to produce tears. A true artist must describe the things he is most afraid of, all that which he wished to avoid.