Maira Kalman quotes:

My short attention span has allowed me a life of diversity in work and place.

On my desk, I always have a lemon or a lime drying. I love the fragrance. Also, a Staedtler eraser, a brush for the eraser and a pencil sharpener.

My workspace is defined by books, ephemera, quiet and light. I don't have a computer, telephone or a fax machine there.

The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It's an unending source of visuals and ideas.

I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

Michael Pollan is a champion. In all ways. A man of great integrity, humor, and common sense and kindness.

My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.

I truly believe there's always a solution to every problem.

Every Monday morning is new hope.

I like Thomas Jefferson, though he intimidated me. I thought he would have been very tough to be around. I don't know if he had such a sense of humor.

There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk.

Washing dishes is the anecdote to confusion. I know that for a fact.

It's almost impossible to reconcile the realities of how one feels during the day, hour by hour. But I approach things not cynically.

I like the brooding man - a brooding man with a sense of humor.

I said, 'Well, how much space do I have?' And they said, 'Well, you know, it's the Internet.'

My sister is an artist and an interior designer. She went to high school for art. I went to high school for music.

I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten.

if something does go wrong, here is my advice... KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.

I don't listen to the news. I don't read the newspaper unless it's eccentric information - and the obituaries, of course.

It is impossible to know what fate will bring. If you love to write or paint, you will keep on writing or painting, and things will either work out or not, and you just have to keep being in the process.

I have been working for over 30 years and am always wondering about where I am and where I am going. It does not stop and become a fixed event of achievement.

Everyone I know is looking for solace, hope and a tasty snack.

I have many questions, but no patience to think them through.

We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non reductive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche's preposterous mustache which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead.

A visit to a museum is a search for beauty, truth, and meaning in our lives. Go to museums as often as you can.

Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.

I tell you these stories because these things happen to everyone. It's not about being starched or polished or cute or polite. It's about having ears that stick out, about breaking yet another glass. It's about seeing something for the first time and making a million mistakes and not ever getting completely discouraged.

My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.

Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud?

The book. Calming object. Held in the hand.

The tears are invisible. I'm in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I'm sure that it's going to be a complete disaster. I'm going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet earth,

Wonderful things happen when your brain is empty.

You'd have to be completely crazy not to be influenced by and take from other artists. It's completely impossible not to.

What protects you in this world from sadness and from the loss of an ability to do something? ... Work and love.

Go out and walk. That is the glory of life,