Regarding accepting commissions after turning down a request to paint poet Robert Frost.

"I never wanted to be with Frost in person. The very best things he's done are just so superb that I didn't want to mar them with the personality. I know he was a great character and had very interesting things to say. But I think he became corny when he got with people. He looked like an old sweet potato that had been baked and found a week later in a cold oven - and for me to go over to Vermont and stick him up against some background and paint his old gray head - to hell with that. The art, the poetry, is the purist form. Not the man."