the more visible my work became, the less visible I grew to myself.

Our society is monstrously disjunctive, at once so efficient in war and so inefficient in caring for the welfare of its members. It is frightening to see people rooting in garbage pails on streets, living in cardboard crates under bridges, while their government wages war. Even when there is an emergency in a household, decent parents do not forget to feed the children.

It is ultimately character that underwrites art.

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

the more visible my work became, the less visible I grew to myself.

I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.

In the range of my character at any given moment, I have acted in the only way it seemed to me I could have acted. This in no way means that I have done what was right; only what was possible for me. Sometimes I have done what I knew was wrong, and have rationalized. But rationalization is a form of desperation. It takes kindness to forgive oneself for one's life.