I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

Who of us knows just why we do what we do, much less another’s whys, or what we’re after? Art is not like that; cut and dried and hit-at like a bull’s eye and done for a reason and explained away by this or that motive. It’s climbing and striving for something always beyond.

If you’re going to lick the icing off somebody else’s cake you won’t be nourished and it won’t do you any good, – or you might find the cake had caraway seeds and you hate them.

Oh I do want that thing, that oneness of movement that will catch the thing up into one movement and sing – harmony of life.

The foolish square calves pretend to be frightened of our train. Bluffers! Haven’t they seen it every day since they were born? It’s just an excuse to shake the joy out of their heels.

I sat staring, staring, staring – half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect.

My mountain is dead. As soon as she has dried, I’ll bury her under a decent layer of white paint. But I haven’t done with the old lady; far from it!

Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul.

Cedars are terribly sensitive to change of time and light – sometimes they are bluish cold-green, then they turn yellow warm-green – sometimes their boughs flop heavy and sometimes float, then they are fairy as ferns and then they droop, heavy as heartaches.

I can rise above the humility of my failure with an intense desire to search deeper and a blind faith that some day my sight may pierce through the veils that hide. I know God’s face is there if I keep my gaze steady enough.