Children, taught either years beneath their intelligence or miles wide of relevance to it, or both: their intelligence becomes hopelessly bewildered, drawn off its centers, bored, or atrophied.

The goal is the same: life itself; and the price is the same; life itself.

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.

The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)

Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?

Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don't.

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children.

The camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time.

I want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. To bad I drew my mistakes in ink.

On the one hand, the press, television, and movies make heroes of vandals by calling them whiz kids.

Gone - flitted away, Taken the stars from the night and the sun From the day! Gone, and a cloud in my heart.

Chance the Rapper' is many things. I'm constantly evolving.

Bruce is the man. He was definitely ahead of his time.

Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

I still draw a lot though. Ballpoint pen is my preferred medium.

I believe in my music.

Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.