Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be.

Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much

Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.

The seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece.

Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work.

To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art

Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.

Tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

The hardest part of art-making is living your life in such a way that your work gets done-over and over-and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful.

We have to construct communities of artists because they don't naturally exist in our culture.

Living your life on your terms, means No excuses and only results.

The nation of my father is too strong for a man who cannot command even his own body.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy

I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.

A Soviet diplomat, like a skilled chess player, does not expect his opposite number to give up something for nothing, not even a pawn.

It is not only that Germany has been defeated in the war, Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany was defeated.

Above all, the only thing you have to heal is the present thought. Get that right and the whole picture will change into one of harmony and joy.

If life's a joke, then suicide's a bad punch line.

I don't like religion; I don't like anything or anybody which tells me what to do! We must take orders only from our own intelligence!

If God always met our expectations, He'd never be able to exceed them.