. . . the great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don't want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do.

I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who don't have deep feelings their pleasure comes from what they know. . . . But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar.

Art to me was a state: it didn't need to be an accomplishment.

Life seems to be an experience in ascending and descending. You think you're beginning to live for a single aim - for self-development, or the discovery of cosmic truths - when all you're really doing is to move from place to place as if devoted primarily to real estate.