Paul Gauguin Quotes

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

No matter what you do, it can't be perfect. I told Jack White, 'If I'd 'a sung that song more'n twice, it might of sounded better.' He said, 'Well, it might not of. You might have took the spark out of it.' I don't know if he has a point or not. We'll find out.

Cleanliness is the scourge of art.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The truth of the matter is, things that feel spontaneous have a much longer life than things that have got a lot of burnt brain tissue to make them perfect.

I can't make a perfect record. When I try to, I bleed all the feeling out of it.

We are continuously bombarded with information, appeals, deadlines, communications... We are continually being squeezed or projected into the future as our present moments are assaulted and consumed in the fires of endless urgency.

I do one take; I never overdubbed twice. I know there's stuff that isn't perfect, but it doesn't matter: Nothing is perfect, and there is a magic there that is undeniable because of the fact that we don't care about those things.

Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

In the last five years I used to go to Zen practice once a month, but since I assumed the post of prime minister it's been much harder.

When you work, work. When you play, play. Don't mix the two.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.

Live purely in the moment on a rampage of appreciation.

Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness ... in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass - -a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited.

The better organized you are in the simple things, the more spontaneous and free you can be in the ore important things.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.

The whole thing is, do as much as you can, when you possibly can, and don't stress.

We can outrun the wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the demon of hurry.

If people would reflect that one can only do one thing at a time and therefore there is never more than one thing to do at a time, there would be less fatigue in the world.

We are a time-starved people, obsessed with fitting huge achievements into our few years. In the process, we often fill our buckets with things that don't matter or work. But when we give up on trying to change what can't be changed, and simply embrace what we love, a miracle occurs. We notice that the moment to be happy has already arrived. It's here, now.

It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about--what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first.

There is but one art, to omit.