Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Do whatever you do intensely.

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.

I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.

We fail to move beyond what is safe, we abandon our dreams in favor of what is sure rather than strive for what is best for us.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.

Just because you say something doesn't make it controversial, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, "I will never compromise"; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.

When backed up against a wall, dig deep, demand excellence, stand tall, and be strong.

Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying. "You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.