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

artists often lie behind on the field long after the art combine, the broad-bladed harvester of informed criticism, has mowed, bailed, and stored the crop.

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 finest teaching touches in a student a spring neither teacher nor student could possibly have preconceived.

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

Generosity is often the stalking horse of control.

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.