It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned. . . . You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.

Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown

Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.