For twenty years I read a book a day, from the time I was seven until I was twenty-seven.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

Art is an experience, not an object.

Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Without ethical consciousness, a painter is only a decorator.

Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought. Thus painting, like music, tends to become its own content.

If one were to ask a painter what he felt about anything, his just response - though he seldom makes it - would be to paint it, and in painting, to find out.

Painting that does not radiate feeling is not worth looking at. The deepest-and rarest-of grown-up pleasures is true feeling.

The main thing is not to be dead.

It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it.

Beauty is within

The body can be a marvel of resiliency, a cactus when it comes to sleep - capable of surviving on mere drops.

I want to use my gifts to tell the truth, and to tell it as beautifully as I can.

Fashion isn't interesting when it comes from an uninspired place.

There are those who believe destiny rests at the feet of the gods, but the truth is that it confronts the conscious of man with a burning challenge.

When you rest in the weakness of your heart, your being moves and your self becomes quieted.

I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.

Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

Sometimes, I think having less money can lead to more artistry.