The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

A work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance.

Great work resists compression.

Great explanations are short, but potent.

Great software delivers the same outcome in fewer clicks.

Great manufacturing processes create products in less time and with less waste.

The shape of genius is simplicity.

A work needs only to be interesting. Most works finally have one quality. In earlier art the complexity was displayed and built the quality. In recent painting the complexity was in the format and the few main shapes, which had been made according to various interests and problems. A painting by Newman is finally no simpler than one by Cezanne. In the three-dimensional work the whole thing is made according to complex purposes, and these are not scattered but asserted by one form. It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful.

Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try.

Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People will say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.

Great art is created through freedom of self-expression and received with freedom of individual interpretation. Great art opens a conversation rather than closing it. And often this conversation is started by accident.

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

Life is beautiful, and this work is even more beautiful than life.

Oui, l'œuvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.

Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which is art.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements.

نجاح العمل بهذه الصورة النهائية العظيمة ، جاء نتجة لتجمع الجزئيات الصغيرة المتلاحقة يوما بعد الآخر ، لمدة طويلة جداّ من العمل المتواصل ، من مئات الخواطر المستلهمة ، وتستمد روعتها ، فى شمولية منظورها وتفاصيلها الدقيقة ، من مبدعها الذى استطاع الصمود لسنوات عديدة