Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.

Wittiness turns me on more than anything else.

A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef.