My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.

I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.

Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better.

Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.

You don't get into the mood to create – it's discipline.

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.