Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Are anybody's parents typical?

Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to the work.

It's a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them--and they simply don't need you. That's all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they'll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on--this desperate need--and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.

It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.