I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.

Look long enough, out or in, and you’ll be glad you are who you are.

If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.

What the world calls failure, I call learning.

He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.

Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

Think hard before you begin, then enter the work.

Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life..."It's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground.

No one but another painter could know the delicacy required to balance the complexities, to keep reality at bay in order to remain in the innermost center of his work.

If you feel joy when you do something unselfish for him, and would just as soon do it in secret as openly, then that rings of the true metal

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

You cannot win in a fight against women, cause men have a need to make sense

She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well.

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

Fear is the denomination of the Old Testament; belief is the denomination of the New.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

We've all got troubles. We all make mistakes. But let's not take a little river turn it into lake.

Suffering is a privilege. It moves us toward thinking of essential things and shakes us out of complacency. Calamity cracks you open, moves you to change your ways.

If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.

When one is not slipshod in small matters, not hypocritical in secret, and not reckless in disappointment, only then is one a true hero.