I am always worried whether I am doing my best work.

A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.

My best work is always done... when I'm experimenting. If I stop experimenting I feel it just becomes a drudgery.

So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.

The real artist is striving to depict his subject's character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.

my sitters get tired waiting for commissioned portraits. If they commission me they have to wait years sometimes because I discard so many.

I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.

I paint as I want to with no holds barred. I am more contented lately than I have been for a long time about my work. But not dangerously so.

Honing a thing down until you can still get through with economy, that's power.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

When you choose to work with a willing, happy heart, you become a beautiful source of joy to all.

We feel secure with things we can see or touch.

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.

The principal means of acquiring an ardent love of Christ are mental prayer, Communion, mortification, retirement.

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?

People who have let go of themselves are so pure that the world cannot harm them.

A man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.