Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer. – Maynard James Keenan

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist. – Ludwig van Beethoven

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal. – Pope Paul VI