"It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect."

"I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered."

"Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things."

"You cannot run away from weakness you must some time fight it out or perish and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"

"My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops."

"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."

"Beauty in art is the harmony of spirit, intellect, and craft. Such is the immutable nature of understanding — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life."