If you want to be successful in the gym, in the classroom, in college or when you get out and go into the world of work, that is going to be determined by how hard you are willing to work.

The hallmark of the minor artist is to be obsessed with style as an end in itself.

One thing is sure: the Sagrada Familia is the first Catholic temple whose bacon was ever saved by Shinto tourism. Not even Gaudi, who believed in miracles, could have forseen that.

If you like your soccer cerebral, and the triumph ultimately to be wrung out of staying power, Milan was the place to be. If you love the uncertainty of teams that cannot defend yet have the courage to attack, attack, attack, then Seville was heaven... The common denominator between the victories of Arsenal and Fenerbache? The strength of mind, the courage to dare in another team's domain, the inner belief that is as much a part of sporting success as the skill a fellow may be born with.

Works of art... do not force meanings on their audience; meaning emerges, adds up, unfolds from their imagined centres... takes one through the process of discovering meaning.

What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture.

There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.