If there was sadness in this creative world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems.

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

I paint life as I would like it to be.

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.

I just wanted to do something important.

No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He's got to put all his talent and feeling into them!

I'll never have enough time to paint all the pictures I'd like to.

If a picture wasn't going very well, I'd put a puppy in it.

The story is the first thing and the last thing.

The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.

A small sharp axe can cut down more trees than a big dull one.

I'm thankful for the incredible advances in medicine that have taken place during my lifetime. I almost certainly wouldn't still be here if it weren't for them.

Increasingly, I'm inspired by entrepreneurs who run nonprofit organizations that fund themselves, or for-profit organizations that achieve social missions while turning a profit.

Thinking man's crumpet? Well, it's more flattering than being a lobotomised man's crumpet, I suppose.

Nicotine has been proven addictive harmful to teenagers, threatening normal brain development.

Christians don't tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. How many times have you stood and sang, “Take my life and let it be” when you haven't given Him one ounce?

Why wilt thou be so sottish, such an enemy to thyself, as to prefer puddle-water, and that poisoned too and stolen, before pure living waters out of thy own well?

I've always loved improv. It's my thing.

Pain prompts us to change behavior that is destructive to ourselves or to others. Pain can be a highly effective instructor.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: For there the mystical brotherhood Of sun and moon and hollow and wood And river and stream work out their will.