As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.

As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.

In the course of history, all empires have been created with premeditation, by an effort often sustained over several generations. Every power has been Roman to a degree. The United States is the first nation to become the most powerful in the world without having sought to be so. Its exceptional energy and organization have never been oriented toward conquest.

Man knows that the world is not made on a human scale; and he wishes that it were.

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.