The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.

More great Americans were failures than they were successes. They mostly spent their lives in not having a buyer for what they had for sale.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning.

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.