Works of art... do not force meanings on their audience; meaning emerges, adds up, unfolds from their imagined centres... takes one through the process of discovering meaning.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre

A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

Why wait for a call when you have a command?

Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public

Popular in our time, unpopular in his. So runs the stereotype of rejected genius.

It is the nature of carnivores to get power and then, having disposed of their enemies, to deploy the emollient powers of Great Art to make themselves look like herbivores.

A life without a positive purpose is nothing but a destiny placed on hold.

There is one thing worse than making a thing wrong: doing badly a right thing.

Look wise say nothing and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

With all due respect to the nation's fish and game departments, more deer die because people hunt them than because people feed them.

To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate.

Our dreams are just wishes, if we never follow them through with action. And in life, you have got to be able to light your own fire.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.

I don't think we should judge celebrities for doing charity work. Period. Whatever their reasons for doing it, they are shedding light on issues that would otherwise go unnoticed.