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

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

I've struggled all my life to get maximum meaning in the simplest possible form.

It is ultimately character that underwrites art.

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

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.

The art of being officially old seems to lie in cooperative submission.