“I began even as a boy to realize how wide the world can be for a man of free intelligence.”

“I was allowed to wander where I could. Here is a case in which you search for your independence and allow something creative to come out of that.”

“It is not in life but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.”

“Pioneers did not produce original works of art because they were creating original human environments they did not imagine Utopias because they were shaping them.”

“If we can find out why the idea rather than the nation of Canada can win a growing loyalty rather than commanding it then it seems to me we shall have come very near to trapping the elusive crea...”

“If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus teaching at least part-time at university level mingling too much for his work's good with academics doing ...”

“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.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”