The artist seeks to record his awareness of order in life.

Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.

Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.

There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.

When you draw a crowd of people in a street or room or landscape, decide whether you want to say that the people dominate the place or that the place is more important than the people.

Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.

Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization.

The purpose of subject matter is to veil technique. The great artist uses the cloak of resemblance to hide the means.

Drawing is the cornerstone of the graphic, plastic arts. Drawing is the coordination of line, tone, and color symbols into formations that express the artist's thought.

Don't be afraid to borrow. The great men, the most original, borrowed from everybody.

Only this time, now that she knew what it felt like to kiss him, she didn’t want to slap that look off his face, she wanted to kiss it off.

On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers.

I think you get better at staring into space. Especially living in the South of France.

Spend your life lifting people up, not putting them down.

The body of poetry is nothing but energy, waves, rhythm.

He was not only a bore; he bored for England.

My parents’ biggest thing was that they just wanted me to graduate high school and go to college. They couldn’t fathom me acting for the rest of my life.

Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They're a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.

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

There ain't no place like paradise.