The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.

We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time, or we shall stick in the mud. Yet neither must we undertake a new world as catastrophic Utopians, and wreck our civilization in our hurry to mend it.

I occasionally swank a little because people like it; a modest man is such a nuisance.

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.