Art is always subject to change in a moment by somebody who's strong enough to shed new light on it.

Black and white can show how something is. Color adds how it is, imbued with temperatures and humidities of experience.

A lot of education is like teaching marching; I try to make it more like dancing.

Everything that would begin to make somebody a good student would tend to make him or her a poor artist, and vice versa.

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

To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.

You could say that clinical depression is an incapacity to aesthetic response. It's like there's a constant agreement within ourselves, a kind of mutual understanding between ourselves and the world.

What I want to know from students, and I ask them right away, is, 'What do you want? I don't care what it is. I want to help you get it.

I can do pretty good work in various short forms, but anything over 1400 words, I'd be of no use. I like to say I'm a river navigator. I need to see the shore behind the shore.

I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything.

I find that the mask of the critic is to have distance.

There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Did you know, ma'am, that our mutual friend can say "kiss my arse" in six languages?

I'd like to go to NYU business school and then go on to film school.

What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

Injustice is not evil in itself, but only in the fear and apprehension that one will not escape those who have been set up to punish the offense.

I was always pale. And I'm glad that I can be open about my paleness now.

One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.