“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. . .

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.

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

But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

My strong belief is that God created human beings and therefore he knows about every aspect of the human body. So if I want to fix it, I just need to stay in harmony with Him.

Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded by allowing every other type of relationship to be made equivalent to it.

You don’t have to solve every problem at once.

Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.