“Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it …. as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.”

Anything can be painted without representation.

It’s not about facts, it’s about feelings. It’s about remembering feelings and happiness.

There’s not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.

I paint with my back to the world

When you look in your mind you find it covered with a lot of rubbishy thoughts.

I think everyone sees beauty. Art is a way to respond

There’s nobody living who couldn’t stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall …. Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting.

Inspiration is there all the time. For everyone whose mind is not clouded over with thoughts whether they realize it or not.

A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions. I think the highest form of art is music. It’s the most abstract of all art expression.

The artist works by awareness of his own state of mind.

I often paint tranquility. If you stop thinking and rest, then a little happiness comes into your mind. At perfect rest you are comfortable.

One must see the ideal in one’s own mind. It is like a memory – an awareness -of perfection.

I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it’s a very mysterious thing, isn’t it?

They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art.

Withdraws and makes itself up again pulls itself together with pride towers with pride rushes forward into imaginary conquest crashes in frustration withdraws with remorse and repentance pulls itself together with new resolution

I once taught art to adults in a night course. I had a woman who painted her back yard, and she said it was the first time she had ever really looked at it. I think everyone sees beauty. Art is a way to respond

For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

He knew them only ‘in Braille’ – the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial – after a life like that?

I was in the Rockin’ Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain.

Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.

Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

That’s it. Curtains. Off to the races. Treetops. Seashells and balloons.

Bring down the curtain, the farce is over.