“We can all be clockmakers, or astronomers. But if we all wanted to be Pushkin. . .if the question is, how do you make a poem by Pushkin?- or, what exactly makes one poem or painting or piece of mus...”

“Philosophy consists in moderating each life so that many lives will fit together with as much liberty and justice as will keep them together: and not so much as will make them fly apart, when the h...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“What drains your spirit drains your body. What fuels your spirit fuels your body.”

“What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times wit...”

“Pleasure brings pain, but inner silence brings nothing negative; it is in itself of great value and is a far better way to be than to be in ego states.”

“When man will return to nature, nature will return to him.”

“The sky is an enormous man.”

“When the full-grown poet came,Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unr...”