Elaboration is not beauty, and sand-paper never finished a piece of bad work.

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.

Don't talk of what you are 'going to do!' Do it!

Imagination comes in after we have experience.

You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality!

Give up the idea of 'color' for awhile! Consider masses - values, only... One dark and one light place in every picture.

Believe that time is going to help you do what you want.

You can't do a fine thing without having seen fine examples.

You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.

Inspiration is nothing without work.

It's impossible to make a picture without values. Values are the basis. If they are not, tell me what is the basis.

Don't sign your namebetween worlds, surmountthe manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live.

We both wanted to know each other's secrets, and we both wanted the other person to go first.

Weeping for other people's pain isn't true weeping if it doesn't come from deep down your heart.

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.

We want Christ to hurry and calm the storm. He wants us to find him in the midst of it first.

Is not living at all not better than living badly?

To be a mother is a magical experience. The whole body is transformed by this.

Go ahead. Weep for the rare, the never seen this way again, the excruciating, ineffable, unmitigated beauty of love.

We are getting used to levels of violence, we are getting used to seeing these horrific things going on all the time. I think it's tough. It's rough.

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.