“Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.”

“Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.”

“Can you imagine the emptiness of knowing that you stood for nothing, that you risked nothing, that all you did was follow fearful people to where they were already going rather than trying to lead them to a better place.”

“You knew better than to pay mind to what people and the devil say.”

“Until Abstract Expressionism you had to have something to paint about, some kind of subject matter. Even though Kandinsky and w:Arthur Dove were improvising earlier, it didn't take. They had to have symbols, suggested natural images or geometry, which was something real structurally. That gave them something to paint about. What was new was the idea that something you looked at could be like something you heard.”

“I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better”

“Did they live happily ever after? They did not. No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say. They had their good days, as you do, and they had their bad days, and you know about those. They had their victories, as you do, and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too. There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves, knowing they had not done their best, and there were times when they knew they had stood where their God had meant them to stand. All I'm trying to say is that they lived as well as they could.”

“Listen to what others have to say. When you speak, you're only repeating things you already know. When you listen you learn.”

“I managed to get a quick PhD — though when I got it I knew almost nothing about physics. But I did learn one big thing: that no one knows everything, and you don't have to.”

“Look at who people are elevating and deifying in the public eye, and ask yourself what those people have done to receive such lauding and what it is they haven’t. When you look at that you say, okay, are these people being revered for something of merit, or are they completely hallow? Or even worse, are they being revered for something that is actually destructive?”