I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.

If one truly loves nature one finds beauty everywhere.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

Beware the abuse of Power. Both by those we disagree with, as well as those we may agree with

I am so pro-swine flu it's - it's like ridiculous.

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.

After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.

My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.

I love Wilco's "I'm the Man Who Loves You." Nels Cline has that weird guitar slide at the beginning and the song is whispered actually.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

Mike Bloomberg may be a Republican these days. But he has been a Democrat for most of his adult life.