Thomas Mann

"An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates."

"For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide."

"Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd."

"For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts."

"All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life."

"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death."