“The amount which cannot be harnessed and domesticated, but insists on its own form of activity rather than one which is offered ready made, is the energy used for the creation of art.”

The artist always has been and still is a being somewhat apart from the rest of humanity.

When one looks back over human existence however, it is very evident that all culture has developed through an initial resistance against adaptation to the reality in which man finds himself.

Fundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.

There is one great and universal wish of mankind expressed in all religions, in all art and philosophy, and in all human life: the wish to pass beyond himself as he now is.

Woman is a being dominated by the creative urge and . . . no understanding of her as an individual can be gained unless the significance and effects of that great fact can be grasped.

The attitude and reactions of artists toward their art children reveal an attitude similar to that which mothers in general possess toward their children. There is the same sensitivity to any criticism, the same possessive pride.

The creator does not create only for the pleasure of creating but . . . he also desires to subdue other minds.

The mystics are the only ones who have gained a glimpse into what is possible when this same capacity [for creation] is used primarily in the service of the individual himself instead of for the creation of art.

The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I’m going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.

When I feel that something I’m writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren’t good are completely manageable. If it’s not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn’t be happy about it

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

Do not insist me to let you go, you come half hearted like a crescent moon, and you go heart-filled like a full moon which glows.

Some stories wait their turn to be told, others just tap you on the shoulder and insist you tell them.

I insist that people – wherever they live – have their rights and they must be able to fight for them.