“To know one thing, you must know the opposite.”

“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.”

“Because a work does not aim at reproducing natural appearances it is not, therefore, an escape from life -- but may be a penetration into reality...as expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to greater effort in living.”

“It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.”

“There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.”

“A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.”

“I know the resolution. I know the end of the story before it ever begins. I must choose love. And for this, I will surely die.”