An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.

There is no faith, without a critical mind

To be kind is good. To be kind without expecting anything in return is better.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion.

The one who has not seen Paris in the morning does not know how beautiful it is.

...that horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

He who loves lives, he who lives works, and he who works has bread.

After all, the world is still great.

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears--I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.

From the biography of Freud, by Irving Stone, said by Freud's fiance after he teased her for being sweet, "Beware of truly sweet people. They have will of iron.

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

Do not call yourself old. A man is as old as the creative force within him.

From out of pain, beauty.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.

There's no love without pain.