“The purpose of my life is to try out the ideas I have for it.”

Words I Wish I Wrote (1997)
Context: My convictions have validity for me because I have experimented with the compounds of ideas of others in the laboratory of my mind. And I've tested the results in the living out of my life. At twenty-one, I had drawn an abstract map based on the evidence of others. At sixty, I have accumulated a practical guide grounded in my own experience. At twenty-one, I could discuss transportation theory with authority. At sixty, I know which bus to catch to go where, what the fare is, and how to get back home again. It is not my bus, but I know how to use it.

As quoted in the "Homi Jehangir Bhabha" profile at the Vigyan Prasar Science Portal http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/bhabha/BHABHANEW.HTM
Context: I know quite clearly what I want out of my life. Life and my emotions are the only things I am conscious of. I love the consciousness of life and I want as much of it as I can get. But the span of one's life is limited. What comes after death no one knows. Nor do I care. Since, therefore, I cannot increase the content of life by increasing its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else … I do have this one purpose — increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.

"Crazy for This Democracy" in Negro Digest (December 1945).
Context: I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial.
The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels.

As quoted in Contemporary Artists: A-K (2002) by Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, p. 680
Context: I feel that we are living a very fragmented life; the whole world — you too. So I perceive the world in fragments. It is somewhat like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. A person can be very, very tiny. And a billboard can make a person very large. You see the corner of a house or you see a bird fly by, and it's all fragmented. Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure — that doesn't deter me in the least.

To Leon Goldensohn (12 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.
Opening sentence of his Mémoires de guerre.
Most famous

Source: On how her adolescent experiences partly shaped Insecure in “Issa Rae: ‘I’ve not started writing season four of Insecure yet. We needed a break’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/13/issa-rae-interview-insecure-little in The Guardian (2019 Apr 13)