Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.
Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.
Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.