The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers

Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

From the place by the railing at the edge of the tracks on the summer evening I return across the city to my own room. I am vividly aware of my own life that escaped the winter on the boat. How many such lives I have lived. Then I only made a dollar and a half a day and now I sometimes make more than that in a few minutes. How wonderful to be able to write words. ... Again I begin the endless game of reconstructing my own life, jerking it out of the shell that dies, striving to breathe into it beauty and meaning. ... I wonder why my life, why all lives, are not more beautiful.

The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves.