Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies on the wind.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. Alcools, Cors de Chasse, st. 2, 3 (1913).)

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. Mercure de France (Paris) no. 33 (April 1, 1911). Anecdotiques (1926).)

It's raining my soul, it's raining, but it's raining dead eyes.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. La Nuit d'avril 1915, Calligrammes (1918). On enemy fire.)

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. "New Painters," The Cubist Painters (1913).)

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. "On Painting," The Cubist Painters (1913).)

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. "On Painting," The Cubist Painters (1913).)

The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. "On Painting," The Cubist Painters (1913).)

To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.

(Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Italian-born French poet, critic. "On Painting," The Cubist Painters (1913).)