“The art of bicycling is a purely mechanical attainment; and though its complications may at first seem hopeless, sufficient practice will result in final mastery.”

“Aside from mastery in the fine arts, success in learning anything is the result of genuine interest and amount of energy dedicated to it.”

“He said, I suppose there are people who are purely moved by great art. I never met a painter who was. I'm not. All I think of when I see that picture is that it has the supreme mastery I have spent all my life trying to attain. And shall not. Ever.”

“Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done.. almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world.. or to repair the devastation we've already wrought.”

“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

“She was thirteen, the daughter of a bicycle mechanic, and she couldn't ride this bicycle. It fought her; it threw her; it hated her.”