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I wanted to explore the kinds of hope and doubt, faith and disappointment, that shape the next generation, whether consciously or not. I suppose, in all of my work, I'm always going back in time.

When I got large enough to go to work, while employed I was reflecting on many things that would present themselves to my imagination; and whenever an opportunity occurred of looking at a book, when the school-children were getting their lessons, I would find many things that the fertility of my own imagination had depicted to me before.

I don't do a lot of research, exactly, but I'm constantly wandering through the world finding things incredible and remembering them.

I am fascinated with times past.

The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events: a point in history and nothing else.

I have no desire to look back, I only want to look forward to the things that are still ahead of me.

Every view, and every object I studied attentively, by viewing them again and again on every side, for I was anxious to make a lasting impression of it on my imagination.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

I think of the past and the future as well as the present to determine where I am, and I move on while thinking of these things.