By an irony of fate, my first employment was as a draughtsman. I hated drawing; it was for me the very worst of annoyances. Fortunately, it was not long before I secured the position I sought, that of chief electrician to the telephone company.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

I’m tired of fighting. I’ve always known that I can’t be an action star all my life.

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

I paint; I draw and paint – I’ve been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere – like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department – I would draw the other people.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

Community colleges play an important role in helping people transition between careers by providing the retooling they need to take on a new career.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?