Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art

The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly - without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child

We have to construct communities of artists because they don't naturally exist in our culture.

To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experiences of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it'd dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is wahtever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work.

Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work.

The seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece.

Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much