“It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes,” [T.S. Eliot] wrote, “who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent.”

“Exhausted after a full day of treating patients, William Carlos Williams angrily answered the phone. “Doctor,” said a woman’s voice, “my child has swallowed a mouse.” “Then get him to swallow a cat,” he replied, and slammed down the receiver.”

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” John Sloan advised one artist. “Pull off your socks and try with your feet.”

“[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds,”

“As George Russell defined a literary movement: “Five or six men who live in the same town and hate each other.”

“Gertrude’s remedy for her mood swings was to print up hundreds of black-bordered calling cards embossed with the single word “Woe,” which she handed out gaily declaring, “Woe is me.”

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