When you consciously decide to breathe more slowly and deeply, you alert your body to the fact that you want it to behave differently. You are not just changing your breathing pattern, you are making a full-body announcement that you are entering into a different relationship with your mind and your body.

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round.

A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.

You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.

Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.