“All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.”

“In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.”

“I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.”

“For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.”

“The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.”

“Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.”

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.”

“Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.”

“Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.”