I come to the point of using steel, and simply cannot. It's like the marriage proposal of a perfectly eligible man who just isn't loveable. It is wood I love.

Their [artists'] essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse's neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again.

Art comes into the highest part of the mind, that with which we can know the presence of God.

Humility is the daughter of truth.

I have slowly come to realize that a family is composed of people who are teaching one another.

There is an appalling amount of mechanical work in the artist's life ... Talent is mysterious, but the qualities that guard, foster, and direct it are not unlike those of a good quartermaster.

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.