After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house.

It's (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.

I always felt that's why people buy records anyhow is because they get that vicarious excitement and thrill that they don't get unless they buy your record.

I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.

In knowing God, each of us also knows himself.

I like stories that are not normal, everyday lives. I don't personally seek them out, but they find me.

Marriage, from love, like vinegar from wine-- A sad, sour sober beverage--by time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavor Down to a very homely household savor.

I feel like, in some ways, I'm just a journalist.

The lives of truest heroism are those in which there are no great deeds to look back upon. It is the little things well done that go to make up a truly successful and good life.

I grew up in the early '70s in New England.

So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.