Your medium has to be alive to you, no matter what you do.

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.

I do not think we have a "right" to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks.

A beautiful rose with an ugly soul wilts quickly.

Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

Man is created to be God's deputy on earth and it is important to realize the obligation to rid ourselves of all illusions and to make our lives a preparation for the next life.

I started playing heavy-metal guitar because that's what I liked. And then I got into classical guitar because it was so technically complicated.

The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art.

I was talking to my friend who's Israeli and she said that from the moment you're born, you're taught to hate the Palestinians. That's it. That's your life. That's what you learn from day one.

My star was fading, I felt the reins slipping out of my grasp, and could do nothing to stop it.

My dream was to play football for the Oakland Raiders. But my mother thought I would get hurt playing football, so she chose baseball for me. I guess moms do know best.