“Hans then asked him about painting from nature; Jackson...bluntly offered a phrase that entered Village lore, “I am nature.”

“I do not paint in front of but from within nature.”

“When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature.”

“Now, nature, as I am only too aware, has her enthusiasts, but on the whole, I am not to be counted among them. To put it bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

“You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.”

“The policeman recognized me, but I suppose that’s only natural. Silk was going to kill him, but I said no.”“Why?” Beldin asked bluntly.“We were in the middle of a busy street for one thing. Killing somebody’s the sort of thing you ought to do in private, wouldn’t you say?”