"It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body."

"A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward."

"To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination."

"A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart."

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."

"It's nice coming to Nashville, and we have four-bedroom house and a dog, and we go swimming a lot. We get down here and spread out a lot, and I miss my sweet tea and my cornbread and my good southern cooking - but I'm down here eating pretty for two weeks and I'm ready to go back to New York City."

"If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'"