Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Don't cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you've got.

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.

A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

I have assigned many of my father's basses to students, without endangering their lives. Also, they do no harm to the fingers.

The right way usually lies between two extremes: it is the narrow channel between the rock and the whirlpool.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

We have to be more modest in what we claim.

Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell.

People will still make great art, but I think it's good to assume you will always be a failure. People were believing the opposite.

Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

There is no such thing as was - only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.