The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.

If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.

Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being. . . . We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to-even surrender to-the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning.

There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs

If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls.

As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business.

Every attempt we make is imperfect; yet each one of those imperfect attempts is an occasion for a delight unlike anything else on earth.