I live my life like an open book, even though it's open on the wrong page.
Being a dandy is a condition rather than a profession. It is a defense against suffering and a celebration of life.
The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic.
Dandyism is a lie which reveals the truth, and the truth is that we are what we pretend to be.
People who have a reputation for being evil are usually good.
Pain can be vitalising; it gives intensity in the place of vagueness and emptiness. If we don't suffer, how do we know that we live?
I am not an intellectual. An intellectual is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso, whereas I just say 'pass the mustard'.
I don't talk, I quote. I can't help it. It's better to be quotable than honest.
If I want to dislike women, I should be allowed to. As it happens, I love them. Women to me are privately worshipped and publicly disdained.
Everyone says Oscar Wilde was a dandy, but he wasn't - he was an aesthete. He took pleasure in food and stuff like that. Dandyism is much more austere - much more Calvinistic, more neurotic - it oscillates between narcissism and neurosis.
You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things, all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach.
Why shouldn't I be allowed to say stupid, outrageous things?
I consider myself to be very correct and proper: an upright citizen.
Think of how many boring, blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretion of me.
I like to remind myself that every morning I'm making a choice to live.
I used to have about a hundred suits in my late twenties and early thirties when my stock was riding high and I was rich.
I like living sparsely. In the main room, there's no furniture - no tables, no chairs, no coffee table - not even a decaffeinated coffee table.
I keep the shutters closed because I like to work in a hermetic environment. I like mirrors. When you look out of the window, all you see is ugliness, but when you look in the mirror all you see is beauty.
I do a lot of things for effect, which is not to say I am superficial, but that I know how to put ideas across.
I think you are born, and I think you die. I have a pragmatic nature, but I yearn to believe.
