The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn’t refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

In my studio, it is unkempt and unattractive. Once I’m in my work, I don’t notice where I am.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

I have been very interested and intrigued and congratulatory toward President Bush and his paintings.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‚Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

Our focus needs to be less on what our legacy’s going to be or how we can control each other and more how we can give to each other.

It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available – more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body’s natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

I create stars.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator – instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

A daily portion is really all we need. We do not need tomorrow’s supply, for that day has not yet dawned, and its needs are still unborn.

In art the best is good enough.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

I’m bloody awful at multi-tasking.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.