“It is clearly evident that most events of a widespread nature draw their causes from the enveloping heavens.”

I often prefer the shapes within the raw materials to ‘do their thing’, as this makes it movre interesting for me.

There’s an inherent message in my work relating to recycling and the nature of value, but my artistic inspiration is fired by the qualities within the raw materials.

I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods.

As material fortune is associated with the properties of the body, so honor belongs to those of the soul.

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.

Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or by pleasure and pain.

Mortal through I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment I gaze up at the night’s starry domain of heaven, Then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator, And my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

The length of life takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth.

It’s only through honesty and courage that science can work at all. The Ptolemaic understanding of the solar system was undermined and corrected by the constant pressure of more and more honest reporting.

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

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.

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

All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.

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.

Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc.

I’ve always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.