“Nothing captured human interest like human tragedy.”

“Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.”

“I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

“The Tragedy of the human condition is that the very things that make us interesting and culturally important and progressively brilliant are our differences; and these are also the principle reasons for our prejudices”

“It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump.”

“To say that a being who is sentient has no interest in continuing to live is like saying that a being with eyes has no interest in continuing to see. Death—however “humane”—is a harm for humans and nonhumans alike.”