Art is mourning and morning.
Art gets its most profound inspiration from unsolvable problems.
The artist has the faculty of umbilical exit from himself which allows him or her to be born over and over again in other near neighboring forms.
We have no choice but to respect the privacy of the artist’s originating impulse. This privacy is complete, so much so that the artist can not penetrate it, but must accept it as given.
An artistic form is a mental structure of relative autonomy that carries on dialogue on its own terms with a host of separate domains of our experience.
An art form is like a fever that rages until it breaks.
A work of art is a burial ground for presence laid out so as to engage visitors in rites of renewal.
The irony of lavishing fortunes to own a work of art is that true fortune is the freedom to be available to be possessed and transformed by the work of art.
In art we recover what we never had in the first place.
The artist’s gifts confer not freedom from suffering but rather freedom in suffering, a maneuverability we recognize as meaning, the opposite of anesthetic.
Of our peculiar intimacy with ourselves we can leave only the most fragmentary record.
One of art’s deepest purposes is to employ mimicry to set snares for our delusions.
Art invents experience as much as experience invents art.
The unsurpassed skill and understanding of ancient artists comfort us by offering both inspiration and collegiality over vast chasms of time.
Life is greater than the sum of its arts.