"In work consists the true pride of life; grounded in active employment, though early ardor may abate, it never degenerates into indifference, and age lives in perennial youth. Life is a weariness only to the idle, or where the soul is empty."

“An image means nothing. It is just a door, leading to the next door. It will never happen that we will find the truth we are looking for just in an image; it will happen behind the last door that the spectator discovers the truth, because of his own efforts.”

Source : "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 30), 2004.

“Balance, or drivability, and the ability to accelerate while cornering are more important than maximum cornering power - every time. Until you reach teh top levels of professional motor racing you will achieve more results by optimizing the package that you have than by redesigning it.”

“My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.”

“The ocean is the only alien and potentially hostile environment on the planet into which we tend to venture without thinking about the animals that live there, how they behave, how they support themselves, and how they perceive us. I know of no one who would set off into the jungles of Malaysia armed only with a bathing suit, a tube of suntan cream, and a book, and yet that's precisely how we approach the oceans.”

“Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.”

“Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity, more central even than humility: the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism, the meekness of the Lamb which is led.”

“My parents made no money whatsoever, but they really knew how to see, as artists. So a big adventure might be, on a hot, dreadful day with no place to go, to go out and draw our chickens with pastels. My parents gave me a sense of wonder.”

“I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes.”

Source : Gloria Whelan (2009). “Summer of the War”, p.13, Harper Collins