...the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?

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.

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

...writing is not a performance but a generosity.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.

...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

By encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover).

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter, --making us think of funnier and funnier things.

Your powers of observation are formidable, " Michael says and Darien giggles behind one perfectly manicured hand, like some sort of preppie geisha.

I hear better with a pen in my hand.

I'm always nervous about singing...always. It may be one of the only things I sweat about.

Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

Funny thing, every time an angel appeared to someone in the Bible, the first thing he'd say was, "Fear not."... I guess they were pretty spectacular.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

Lose your smile and lose your customers.

Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool.

I never hid out. I was never big enough a star.