“If you spend 10,000 hours on the bunny slope, you’re never going to win the World Cup.”

What would be the first thing I’d add back? Jesus. It sounds a little bit like a Sunday school answer, but that’s what I do. Then what’s the next thing? And I’d say, well, loving people. And then the next.

Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there’s a seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.

There’s a kind of edge to what you’re doing, the kind of leading edge of what you’re doing. Inside that edge [are elements you] are familiar with, and are probably becoming slightly bored with, as well, over a period of time. “I’ve pulled that one out before. Oh, no, I can’t I’m just fed up with that.

Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. Its a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are stupid. They take drugs. They get drunk and do all the wrong things in life. I just played it straight.

You have to watch what you eat.

One of the things I’ve had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.

One of the things that I learned is that you never truly know yourself until you challenge yourself.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

What is genius, anyway, if it isn’t the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?

It was a huge challenge to learn digital painting well enough so that computers don’t pop into mind when one sees one.

You have to meet all of the challenges, big and small. Because how you start is how you finish.

It takes no effort to be ordinary. Ordinary is not even a challenge. You can do nothing and be ordinary.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.