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

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

I have no home but me.

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

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.

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