I had forgotten what sleep is like - a kingdom all its own.

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.

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.

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

The end of parenthood is implicit in its beginning: separation.

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