It is ultimately character that underwrites art.

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.

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

The difference between men and women is inalienable. It is not a political fact, subject to cultural definition and redefinition, but a physical verity. We do truthfully experience our lives differently because our bodies are different. It is in what we do with our experience that we are the same. We feel, absorb and examine with the same intensity, and intense experience honestly examined informs the art of both sexes equally. ... The power of imagination illuminates all human lives in common.

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

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

the capacity to work feeds on itself and has its own course of development. This is what artists have going for them.