“I sleep with my feet on moss carpets, my branches in the cotton of the clouds.”

“In the dark I hear the night birds call
I can feel a lover's breath
I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall
Sleep is like a temporary death”

“Since I have spread my wings to purpose high,
The more beneath my feet the clouds I see,
The more I give the winds my pinions free,
Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.”

“I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream;
You've got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem.
This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways.
So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise.”

“I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.”

“A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.”

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear — O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant land.”

“I refuse to make money out of my science. My laurel is not for sale like so many bales of cotton.”

“YOU BASTARD! Come to my carpet shop.”

“I had innumerable visions at that time [c. 1903]; wherever I looked, Nature was alive, the sky, the clouds, on every stone and among the branches of the trees, everywhere my creatures stirred and lived their still or wild, lively lives, arousing my excitement and crying out to be painted.”