Be the Worst You Can Be: Life's Too Long for Patience and Virtue

Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on.

My aim in life isn't so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit.

Art collectors are pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. What matters and survives is the art.

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

The fact that in the last 10 years only five of the 40 Turner Prize nominees have been painters tells you more about curators than about the state of painting today.

There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist's dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good.

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.

Nobody can give you advice after you've been collecting for a while. If you don't enjoy making your own decisions, you're never going to be much of a collector anyway.

I may not be much good at most things, but if I didnt have the pleasure of planning and installing shows, and doing it better than anyone else, I would have stopped buying art many years ago.

That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.

We can't even resist making antimatter, so what makes you think we are going to leave cloning technology untapped? (Douglas Parsley)

Laughter erupted from her belly and shot out her mouth like pigeons through an open cage door, schoolchildren bursting into summer vacation, water from a tapped hydrant.

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

Not only must a warrior be strong with his bow, but he must have a heart full of pity for all living creatures.

He that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

In the end, the type of parent you are is going to be something that you carry with you. ... Having multiple kids, it's been a gift in a way. It's keeping the priorities straighter.

Money can't buy you happiness but it can pay for the plastic surgery.

I have seen flowers come in stony places And kind things done by men with ugly faces, And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races, So I trust, too.

Really ain't one to boast, but I'm doing better than most