“Why did you come here?
To find you.”

“Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A: Why do men go to zoos?”

“This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.”

“I find you
in these tears, few,
useless and here at last.
Don't come back.”

“How did you find me here?
If I was blind, I would see you.
Stay with me.
Forever. That's the whole point. I'll never leave. Not even if you kill me.”

“This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind.”

“Why… do you find this… distracting?”

“I can't stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all in painting, to look and to look a great deal at painting. There is no other way to find out about painting. After looking comes imitating. In my own case it was at first largely a technical immersion. How did Kline put down that color? Why did Guston leave the canvas bare at the edges? Why did H. Frankenthaler used unsized canvas. And so on.”

“Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough.”

“You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.”