Beauty is not a concept. It is the animal joy of the mind.

Everybody's got plants, but most are just growing weeds. The cultivated have greater gardens, finer and gaudier gardens.

Love and fear, the two strongest emotions we have. It all starts with emotion.

Rembrandt was way ahead of his time. It's as if he was painting an amateur theatrical, or a professional theatrical, in his studio. It's a kind of performance.

With art criticism it's difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there's always the possibility that we're insane.

There is an ineffable but fatal difference in attitude between people behaving naturally and people behaving naturally for a camera.

There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.