I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed.

Picasso had nicknamed Georges Braque "Wilbur," thereby becoming "Orville" in their Wright Brothers-like ambition to get painting off the ground of conventional representation.

A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great.

For Rembrandt, reality is role-playing.... Everyone is portrayed in relation to a social hierarchy.

Your medium has to be alive to you, no matter what you do.

Beauty is a physiological reaction. Beauty is not an object.

I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything.