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

Matisse can make you hate your life for its comparatively insipid joys.

Artists are sometimes in a position to tell the truth, but they're positioned as a Cassandra. They're gifted with impeccable prophecy and the assurance of never being listened to.

I'm absolutely convinced that people cannot look and read at the same time. Not any more than you can kneel and jump at the same time. It's a completely different physiological setting.

A word is a thought, of course. But any image, including a photograph, may become an instrument of sufficiently lucid cogitation.

Smithson was someone of tremendous significance whose work was not beautiful at all. I think he was an iconoclast.

Artists are expected to talk about their work but writers aren't expected to talk about their writing.