“It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.”

The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring.

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

The only history that matters is the history we know.

Poetry is a very complex art, It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

It doesn’t matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.

Liberty is not a right but a duty.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you.

Any damn fool can be spontaneous.

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect – completely removed in fact – even as we ourselves are.

Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it.

Just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.

Most people have no idea what Cabo Verde is or even where it is to mention, so I definitely want to make people aware of this beautiful culture.

We’re living in a certain time, and we’re aware of it. And that’s part of what we’re aware of, along with our own personal aches and pains.

A lot of talent is a gift, but a lot is also luck. I’m very aware of that. I was born in the right place at the right time. I am also blessed because I’ve never been a sex symbol. I’m spared the embarrassment of acting young.

It’s psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you’re trying to depict.