A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great.

Black and white can show how something is. Color adds how it is, imbued with temperatures and humidities of experience.

A lot of education is like teaching marching; I try to make it more like dancing.

Everything that would begin to make somebody a good student would tend to make him or her a poor artist, and vice versa.

Matisse can make you hate your life for its comparatively insipid joys.

To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.

You could say that clinical depression is an incapacity to aesthetic response. It's like there's a constant agreement within ourselves, a kind of mutual understanding between ourselves and the world.

What I want to know from students, and I ask them right away, is, 'What do you want? I don't care what it is. I want to help you get it.

I can do pretty good work in various short forms, but anything over 1400 words, I'd be of no use. I like to say I'm a river navigator. I need to see the shore behind the shore.

I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything.

I find that the mask of the critic is to have distance.

He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help

Well, you know what they say in Hollywood - the most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it.

There had to be a better way - if I couldn't find it, I wanted to create it.

I've been hurt so many times I don't have the balls for it anymore.

Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change.

I don't really see a difference in independent and major labels. To me, it's pretty much the same. There used to be a difference between indies and major labels, but I don't think there is anymore.

The longer you wait, the more the jump rope becomes a big steel cable.

I've witnessed thousands of superior athletes try to becomes hitters and fail at it.