“It never struck me as interesting that I didn't go to school — we had our own little world.”

“Though I studied with Robert Henri, I was never a member of the Ash-Can School. You see, it had a sociological trend which didn't interest me. [Hopper then proceeded to inform Kuh that his work contained no social content whatsoever! ]”

“Something stopped me in school a little bit. Anything that I'm not interested in, I can't even feign interest.”

“My mother was mistrustful of the education system, so it was all right with her if we didn't go to school. She was taking us to Truffaut films, and I was busy getting through a Knut Hamsun book or something, so she felt satisfied we weren't wasting our lives watching The Brady Bunch. Because of where we lived, I would've had to go to Belmont High, so the year I was supposed to start high school I tried to get into the High School for the Performing Arts, which had just opened. I sent them a tape of me playing blues guitar and some short stories I'd written, but they didn't want me.”

“We never really cared about all the things that other people cared about, you know? Like, people recognizing me on the street never interested me. I've always been kind of suspicious of the world, anyway, so it's pretty easy for me to live in my own little world.”

“They wouldn't fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.”

“My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.”

“(on not going to his high school prom) I wasn't aware of the prom. I had no idea that it was even going on, not that I would have gone. It's not the kind of thing that would ever occur to me. You would think I would have heard about it in school, but I didn't.”

“I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.”

“Often I am struck in amazement about a word: I suddenly realize that the complete arbitrariness of our language is but a part of the arbitrariness of our own world in general.”