“If all of the steps of surrender are present, then a great Rembrandt or Monet will evoke love because the artist is simply there in all his naked humanity.”

“Your impression of me is different than my impression of me. But that’s OK, because your impression is impressionistic, like a Monet painting, while mine is realistic, like a Rembrandt.”

“Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.”

“All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings.”

“A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.”

“If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.”