“Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.”

“Be workable all you can in a relationship, but do not compromise.”

“Compromise and workability are two very different things. Compromise undermines your values. It corrodes your life. It ruins relationships. Workability preserves your values. It enhances your life. And it strengthens relationships.”

“I tend to believe that the difference between us and them is that we don’t compromise our principles for temporary convenience.”

“We must examine the traditional demands of our race and social structure in light of the resources we have at hand and strike a workable balance.”

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.”

“we must take care of our families wherever we find them.”

“The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.”

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

“Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?”