All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

My art is representational by choice....if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate.

I implore those who love me to love my solitude.

I prayed to rediscover my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be, and that growing older has served no purpose at all.