Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[...]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action.
In our memories, there is a graveyard where we bury our dead. They all lie there together, the loved ones and the ones we hated, friends and foes and kin, with no distinction among them. We have to mourn every one of them, because our memories have made them as much a part of us as our bones or our skin. If we don't, we've no right to remember anything at all.
The tools are real. The viewer is real, you, the artist, is real and a part of everything you paint. You connect yourself to the viewer by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you. All you have to do it with is a brush, some chemical and canvas, and technique.
It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good.