I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.

A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it's an exchange of blood, a total embrace - without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.

To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

What I am seeking... is a motionless movement, something equivalent to what is called the eloquence of silence.

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.

Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.

At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God's own love and concern.

No one is satisfied with his fortune or dissatisfied with his intellect.

I see so many tattoos of my stuff on people - tattoos of my book covers, tattoos of quotes . . . it's kind of daunting sometimes.

No one likes to fail. But we mortals do not become champions without effort and discipline or without making mistakes.

You are a fluid metaphor for existence. You are your own death and your own rebirth. Here is forever. It never changes. We bring perpetual oblivion until we change the world.

Every time we get slapped down, we can say, Thank you Mother Nature, because it means we're about to learn something important.

These days, government employees are better off in almost every area: pay, benefits, time off and security, on top of working fewer hours.

If you love someone and they reject and neglect, you gotta move on, there's no point running in circles for someone when there's no reward.

In the real life-process, willing, feeling, and thinking are only different aspects.