“A kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.”

“...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...”

“If it moves, starch it. If it doesn't move, starch it. If it seems it has enough starch already, it hasn't, so starch it again.”

“There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant.”

“We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.”

“Our personal natal horoscope provides us with a powerful tool for understanding our own energy signature and how it [one person, or, a group] is affected by other energy forms including matter.”