Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.

Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.

You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it, and ways to eliminate it so that the whole surface looks felt and born all at once.

I'd rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.

In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you're never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.

There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.

Every canvas is a journey all its own.

I follow the rules until I go against them all.

I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist.

What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?

What is this slow blue dream of living, and this fevered death by dreaming?

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

Youth has no age.

If there is any verse that you would like left out of the Bible, that is the verse that ought to stick to you, like a blister, until you really attend to its teaching.

I've always been a little soft. I like to eat.

I have not seen Al Gore's movie.

I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.

A dramatic writer should never tell anything he can show.

I could never have a mistress, because I couldn't bear to tell the story of my life all over again.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens