“To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.”

“Write the words "The FIve Senses" on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can ta...”

“I've never heard a writer feel that way about a device with a screen. Oh sure, they're functional, practical. We would be lost without them. But just as we need to feel our feet on the earth, smell...”

“If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that...”

“Act as if you're a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don't wait for anybody to tell you it'...”

“Think of a ballet dancer at the barre. Plie, eleve, battement tendu. She is practicing, because she knows that there is no difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”

“Sometimes, insatiable curiosity and compassion are all that life requires of us.”

“Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.”

“If spectacle is lacking in everyday life, it may be because we have forgotten where and how to look.”