From the age of six, I had the passion for drawing the forms of things.
By the age of fifty, I had published an infinity of designs; but all
that I produced before the age of seventy is of no account. Only when I
was seventy-three had I got some sort of insight into the real structure
of nature--animals, plants, trees, birds, fish, and insects.
Consequently, at the age of eighty I shall have advanced still further;
at ninety, I shall grasp the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall be
a marvel, and at a hundred and ten every blot, every line from my brush
shall be alive!
_Hokusai._