David Bowie

Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

I’m terribly intuitive-I always thought I was intellectual about what I do, but I’ve come to the realization that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing half the time.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

Make the best of every moment. We’re not evolving. We’re not going anywhere.

I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I’m working for me.

If you hold onto the beauty and inspiration and the clarity that is music, you will have an anchor, you will not be too far swayed by what the world is.

MoMA is doubling its space, and I decided to raise the money for it.

Can anybody be given creativity? No. Only equipment to develop it if it’s in them in the first place.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

In the field of art, to be able to have lunch with Kirk Varnedoe is thrilling. I met him at Si and Victoria Newhouse’s dinner one night. Barnett Newman’s widow was there. That’s the part of me that’s a fan. Like when I was a kid and went to the Brooklyn Paramount. Well, my interest has expanded, and it’s not just rock-and-roll.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

An artist can only be evaluated after he’s dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else.

Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

One of the things about creativity is you can be in denial about these things. When I found out I had cancer, there were four hours in which I was pounding my head on the marble kitchen top saying, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” But then I felt as if this little army in uniform was flooding me. They had come to help me fight it. I felt really strong about it after that. It was one of the strongest periods of my life.

There’s no collection that has a better representation of post-war American art than David Geffen’s.

She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

The essence of all Art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of…recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it.