Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

Rather than set aside daily time for prayer, I pray constantly and spontaneously about everything I encounter on a daily basis. When someone shares something with me, I'll often simply say, 'let's pray about this right now.'

Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.

I'm working on a snow scene right now, and it's summer. It's hot, and I will get chilly. I'll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it's 95 degrees in the studio. I know it's nutty, but it's a projection you have where you step into the painting.

I think the art world... is a very small pond, and it's a very inbred pond. They rely on information from an elect elite sect of galleries, primarily in New York.

It is easy to have a lot of paintings or projects hanging around that are 'almost done.'

The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist.

A painting has a lot of advantages over other forms of communication. Unlike a movie, you don't have to put it into a machine and turn it on. It's just there every day. It's not limited by the element of time. It's a constant part of the home.

A still image attracts the viewer with an overall impact, then reveals smaller details upon further study.

Art is forever.

Each of us is a small part of God's plan. I'm a small part. I create paintings that are being used by God.

Every painting I do blends time frames. The great thing about being an artist is I can make the past join the present in some reality of the future.

I began my career creating art for an animated feature film, and it has been a life-long dream to tell some of the story of my own life - the story behind my art - through the medium of motion pictures.

I grew up in a broken home. My dad was out of the home when I was five years old. I never knew him very well.

I love audio books, and when I paint I'm always listening to a book. I find that my imagination really takes flight in the painting process when I'm listening to audio books.

I share something in common with Norman Rockwell and, for that matter, with Walt Disney. In that I really like to make people happy.

I've always been drawn to artists who paint for the everyday person. I love the American illustrators.

I've had so much positive reaction and emotional fulfillment from the creation of my art and sharing it with everyday people that I never paid too much attention to the opinion of critics.

Literature is the stringing together of pictures in words.

My brother and I always had jobs and worked from a young age.

My paintings always feature trails that dissolve into mysterious areas, patches of light that lead the eye around corners, pathways, open gates, etc.

The No. 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's relevant to 10 million people. That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture.

The disintegration of the culture starts with the artist. I'm on a crusade to turn the tide in the arts, to restore dignity to the arts and, by extension, to the culture.

The whole Modernist lie is that art is about the artist.

What I paint touches on foundational life values. Home, family, peacefulness. And one of the messages I try to constantly get across is, 'Slow it down and enjoy every moment.'

You have to expect spiritual warfare whenever you stand up for righteousness or call attention to basic values. It's just a matter of light battling the darkness. But the light wins every time. You can't throw enough darkness on light to put it out.

Each of us is a small part of Gods plan. Im a small part. I create paintings that are being used by God.

The power of prayer is like turning on a light as it illuminates God's purpose for our lives. There is no greater connection to knowing His will other than the word.

Rather than set aside daily time for prayer, I pray constantly and spontaneously about everything I encounter on a daily basis. When someone shares something with me, I'll often simply say, 'let's pray about this right now.

Love is the stepping stone to new beginnings.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

I believe as human beings we are out of balance, out of synch with the earth.

But all the money in the world cannot make you happy either, so there has to be a balance.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

And Big Night, I think by the end the brothers find that balance, when they touch each other on the shoulder over breakfast and it's understood that what should never have driven them apart almost drove them apart. I think that's a true moment.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

In 1844, there was a balance of perhaps of a couple of thousand dollars on the cr side.

You need a balance in life between dealing with what's going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.

You can't have too much of everything, you must have a balance, that's very important.

I've watched those shows my whole life - being on one is like a dream. It's hard to balance that dream with the fact that this is the Edie I've known my whole life.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

I think what I'm going to do is get more balance in my life to still be able to go out and play the hard rock 'n' roll and do what I like to do in music.

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

It sounds extraordinary but it's a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.

We're on the verge of a financial collapse unless we balance the budget, and that means some really, really tough decisions.