Ross Wetzsteon

“Finally, when someone asked [Pollack] how he knew when a painting was finished, he replied, “How do you know when you’ve finished making love?”

“[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds,”

“Hans then asked him about painting from nature; Jackson...bluntly offered a phrase that entered Village lore, “I am nature.”

“It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes,” [T.S. Eliot] wrote, “who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent.”

“As George Russell defined a literary movement: “Five or six men who live in the same town and hate each other.”

“Exhausted after a full day of treating patients, William Carlos Williams angrily answered the phone. “Doctor,” said a woman’s voice, “my child has swallowed a mouse.” “Then get him to swallow a cat,” he replied, and slammed down the receiver.”

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” John Sloan advised one artist. “Pull off your socks and try with your feet.”

“Gertrude’s remedy for her mood swings was to print up hundreds of black-bordered calling cards embossed with the single word “Woe,” which she handed out gaily declaring, “Woe is me.”