I really don't like the city anymore. You get pushed and harassed and people grope you. It's too tumultuous. It's too crazy.

I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!

I did not know how to paint a mural. I did not know how to prepare the surface. There was nobody from the Renaissance around who could advise me, and I did the best I could.

I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.

Then one day my sister abandoned me at the 1939 World's Fair, and that incident is the essence of In the Night Kitchen. I was standing there with hundreds of other people waving back at the little midgets dressed like bakers when I turned around and my sister was gone! The next thing I know I'm screaming and crying and policemen are taking me to a big place with tons of kids who had all been abandoned like me. At least I was old enough to give them a name and an address.

Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.

My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.