"I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time."

"The humanists' replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you'll either save yourself or you'll be immortal. Of course, that's a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there's no ethical progress whatsoever."

"I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange I never thought I would be."

"I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go."

"Art is the soul's attempt to give enduring form to the formless. Remember this in moments of decisive trial."

"Art is the soul's attempt to give enduring form to the formless. This remains the cornerstone of personal mastery — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors."

"She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."