Barbara Cooney Quotes & Sayings

She was an enthusiastic painter of oils and watercolors. She was also very generous. I could mess with her paints and brushes all I wanted. On one condition: that I kept my brushes clean. The only art lesson my mother gave me was how to wash my brushes. — Barbara Cooney

It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the spirit of place, became of paramount importance to me. It was then that I began my travels, that I discovered, through photography, the quality of light, and that I gradually became able to paint the mood of place. — Barbara Cooney

You must do something to make the world more beautiful - Ms. Rumphius — Barbara Cooney

My favorite days were when I had a cold and could stay home from school and draw all day long. — Barbara Cooney

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting ... . I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children. — Barbara Cooney

'Miss Rumphius' has been, perhaps, the closest to my heart. There are, of course, many dissimilarities between me and Alice Rumphius, but, as I worked, she gradually seemed to become my alter ego. Perhaps she had been that right from the start. — Barbara Cooney