The hardest part of art-making is living your life in such a way that your work gets done-over and over-and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful.

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

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

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

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot - and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.

Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.