The extent to which we live from day to day, from week to week, intent on details and oblivious to larger presences, is a gauge of our impoverishment in time.

The mind which can totally and inanely forget its work and obligations is often also the mind which can, at the proper time, give them the fullest attention.

To be open to inspiration, one must cultivate a leaning for the problematic, a chronic attraction to things that do not totally fit, agree, or make sense. Inspired ideas are less often solutions to old problems than newly discovered or totally reformulated problems - problems 'created' like brilliant works of art.

Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character.

All great experience has a guarded entrance and a windowless facade.

We are wistful about the golden days of the past and dream of a distant future unclouded by necessity. But I suspect that if our inner souls were asked what in life they really missed, the answer would be primal danger and stress.

Like students of art who walk around a great statue, seeing parts and aspects of it from each position, but never the whole, we must walk mentally around time, using a variety of approaches, a pandemonium of metaphor.