This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.

There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love.

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart

That's why it's called a practice. We have to practice a practice if it is to be of value.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much moral and intellectual ground they can concede to the adversaries of Christianity.

My parents believe in the happy endings to the stories of their children.

Never speak out of anger, Never act out of fear, Never choose from impatience, But wait... and peace will appear.

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

Hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. That adds a new dimension to both. Both are enriched by it.

All my life there's always been an ex-wife or a girlfriend.

Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die