You have to live in a state of thinking your painting is good, or you couldn't do it.

It's difficult to paint every day, and people who say they do, probably don't; it's a very demanding thing.

People don't paint for the hell of it. It's a deeply seated thing - a preoccupation - the whole of one's life.

Did you seriously just use the word 'loins'?

I have to wonder, ” Aaron said, 'does your conscience whack you upside the head every time you contemplate taking a little time to just enjoy life?' - from Fly Away With Me

Now I see that if one doesn't know how to die, one can hardly know how to live - because deathis a part of life.

Look, the job of life is to turn your negatives into positives

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.

The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.

I like PBS. I love Big Bird ... But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

I want to be judged harshly because that forces me to really sit down and focus.