Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

I can’t control the waves of the ocean, but I can learn how to navigate my ship.

The shadow of scepticism is dispelled in the light of real knowledge.

When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.

Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease.

I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art.

Let the efforts of us all, prove that he [Martin Luther King] was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold

The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.

I thought the best thing that I could do would be to clean up my own act, in terms of whatever .. childhood wounds were left.

I was more of a weightlifter.