“Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.”

“Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.”

“Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.”

“When a man finds his self under the water, he has got to kick to get to the top...”

“A university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society…It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.”

“It's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years. Finally, she relents and you say, 'I'm terribly sorry. I'm tired.' [After winning his first Oscar after so many losses]”

“Man kills, the things he love the most, sometimes by the virtue of hatred, crime, anger and war and sometimes by dramatizing his activities. But he is not aware that his killings are his own self-image.”