Very interesting for an old duffer like me to try his hand at something new. If I don't do that once in a while, I might just turn into a fossil, you know!

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.

Our strong spirit will survived every situation.

I painted one dining room red and I must say, the conversation became very heated in that room.

Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

I don't think it is worth trying to look 10 years younger through surgery.

I was a nothing kid. Not particularly good. Not particularly bad.

England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

Wisdom and foolishness are practically the same. Both are indifferent to the opinions of the world

My mother was a librarian, and she worked at the Black Resource Center in South Central Los Angeles and would call me to tell me stories that she read about that were interesting to her.

Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions.

Good public speaking is based on good private thinking