An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

How difficult it is to be simple.

Do not call yourself old. A man is as old as the creative force within him.

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us.