Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers."

It's all in how you arrange the thing... the careful balance of the design is the motion.

I'm not at all interested in painting the object just as it is in nature. Certainly I'm much more interested in the mood of a thing than the truth of a thing.

I can't work completely out of my imagination-I must put my foot in a bit of truth-and then I can fly free.

I think a person permeates a spot, and a lost presence makes the environment timeless to me, keeps an area alive. It pulsates because of that.

If it [talent] isn’t strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it’s not worth much.