"I guess I had this silly notion that things would be different now, since I was different."

“I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.”

“Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?”

“The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.”

“I've tried to use the recognition as validation that I'm doing the kind of work that people are interested in and to feel that my work is a contribution.”

“Their spirituality was in nature, even though Emerson was a preacher on the pulpit, he ended up going out into nature for direct, face-to-face communication with God, if you want to call all of this creation part of God.”

Source : "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

“It is only the untalented director who imagines him or herself in every part, wants his or her own thoughts and emotions portrayed; it is only the untalented who make their own limitations those of the actors as well.”

“May every Church and Christian community be a place of mercy amid so much indifference.”

“A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”