There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Something that is yours forever is never precious

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

All beginnings are hard.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

Because what's perplexing is not that you and I encounter suffering in this life

The only way to get what you want is to make them more afraid of you than they are of each other.

Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

Versace pythons. Louis Aviators. Balenciagas & they gotta be the gladiators.

Every 10 years, I know less about love and relationships. The smarter I get, the less I know.

America's greatness is not found in the size of its government. America's greatness resides in the hearts and the minds of the people.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.