The art of being officially old seems to lie in cooperative submission.

Love ... is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own intimate sensitivity.

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art.

Artists have no choice but to express their lives.

Art comes into the highest part of the mind, that with which we can know the presence of God.

I've struggled all my life to get maximum meaning in the simplest possible form.

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.

I have no home but me.

I have slowly come to realize that a family is composed of people who are teaching one another.

There are three certainties in a writer's life: death, taxes, and rejection letters.

It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.

No matter how much I respect someone or how much I like someone, it doesn't exceed my will to win.

You can solve all the world's problems in a garden.

All I know is, if you listen to society, you'll never get anywhere!

He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.

The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love.

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.

Success is not something you achieve, conquer, climb, or complete. Success is a process; it's a way of life.