I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit.

To have a style is to be stuck.

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.

When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.

The answer will only arrive after we stop looking for it.

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.

Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward.

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

Tell the world what you intend to do but first show it.

If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had -it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.

I'm a huge Sissy Spacek fan.

We look so much on color that we forget about the soul.

Optimism is America's birthright.... There is no social problem Americans dare not attack. No problem, that is, except one: about marriage, and marriage alone, we despair.

Because I think every child star suffers through this period because you're not the cute and charming child that you were. You start to grow, and they want to keep you little forever.

I don't know how people can live without a therapist.

If landscape is a character for me, then it helps if I'm familiar with it and I already have a take on it.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.