The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

There is spontaneity to my work.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we’re going forward to tomorrow or whether we’re going to go past to the – to the back!

I can’t say that my disability has helped my work, but it has allowed me to concentrate on research without having to lecture or sit on boring committees.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

They say miracles are past.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I was adored once too.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

I seen a lot of artists be hot for a minute, and then that’s it, and somebody else come in.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

All my favorite artists and fashion icons and models are from the Nineties. Everybody was just so fearless.

The Roman Curia has its defects, but it seems to me that people often overemphasize its defects and talk too little about the health of the many religious and laypeople who work there.

It feels good to have your work respected again.

I like to work and am a focused person.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

When you go on your Twitter or look down your Timeline and it’s all great positivity – I love that. But at the same time, it can really divert you from what your purpose is or what you’re trying to do. And I’ve seen artists get caught up in that.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.