“Myths show us what we have in common with every other human being.”

I love trying to render not just the object, but what it has been through.

This is one of the magical things about drawing – it gives us almost visionary moments of connectedness.

The power of both myth and art is this magical ability to open doors, to make connections – not only between us and the natural world, but between us and the rest of humanity.

When I draw something, I try to build some kind of history into it.

I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river, I’m still learning how to see them.

And at the same time, mythic stories and art celebrate our essential differences.

I’m drawn to characters who bear similarities to the protagonists in myths and legends.

I spend as much time as I can sketching from nature,

I ‘m still discovering how to render their forms. I will spend a lifetime doing that. Maybe someday I’ll get it right.

Drawing an object that has a certain amount of wear and tear or rust; or a tree that is damaged.

To draw a tree, to pay such close attention to every aspect of a tree, is an act of reverence not only toward the tree, and toward the earth itself, but also our human connection to it.

Dartmoor contains such a rich variety of landscape, as many boulders, foaming rivers and twisted trees as my heart could ever desire.

When I look into a river, I feel I could spend a whole lifetime just painting that river.

No matter what culture we come from, no matter what century we live in. . .

I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, “This is me and the world be damned!” Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society – Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

So many people doubted me. They motivated me every single day, to be, who I am.

I pray for you every night. You’ve taught me to feel confident in myself, believe in myself that I can do it when I didn’t think I could do it.

I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance.