Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor-it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.

We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.

I went to Europe three times, I read dozens and dozens of books, I studied thousands of photos. But I always supplemented that research with imagination; research might give you detail, but imagination supplies the direction in which to apply all that detail.

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.