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

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

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

Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be.

There's generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artist's work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.

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

To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.