“Life is art, Joe. Living is artistry. What we do, you and me, is artifice, but if it is artfully done, then it is art. What else is there but that which we create?”

“Reality is perception. Perception is description. Description is creation. Creation is life.”

“Yeah. Penicillin. You know that? It's made of mold. Pretty cool huh, how one kind of rottenness can cure another kind of rottenness.”

“Sometimes a soft touch can accomplish more than a thousand swords.”

“Devils and whores. It is bad luck to talk of such things without a drink in your hand.”

“I prefer a good honest whore over a dishonest wife”

“There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. How do you describe the [reader to place words here] that changes when craft swells to art?"Artists come together with the clear knowledge that when all is said and done, they will return to their studio and practice art alone. Period. That simple truth may be the deepest bond we share. The message across time from the painted bison and the carved ivory seal speaks not of the differences between the makers of that art and ourselves, but of the similarities. Today these similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity -- audience, critics, economics, trivia -- in a self-conscious world. Only in those moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it's not art. Your job is to draw a line from your art to your life that is straight and clear.”