One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're … - William Saroyan

In every house there ought to be an art table on which, one by one, things are placed, so that everybody in that house might look at the things very carefully, and see them.'

'What would you put on a table like that?'

'A leaf. A coin. A button. A stone. A small piece of torn newspaper. An apple. An egg. A pebble. A flower. A dead insect. A shoe.'

'Everybody's seen those things.'

'Of course. But nobody looks at them, and that's what art is. To look at familiar things as if they had never before been seen... A necktie. A pocketknife... a walnut.

Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.