“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.

Did you ever get fed up?’ I said. ‘I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?

Sleep tight, ya morons!

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

Don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.

It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S’s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the writer’s pride in having given up his pride.

I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.