We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.

At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.

Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.