“Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.”

“Work is love made plain, whether man’s work or woman’s work.”

“Think hard before you begin, then enter the work.”

“That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.”

“No one but another painter could know the delicacy required to balance the complexities, to keep reality at bay in order to remain in the innermost center of his work.”

“If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.”

“At this stage of life, he'd better just lean into love, because if he fell, he feared he might break a hip.”