James Thurber

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

The harder I work, the luckier I get.

Well if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone.

Mother’s interest in contemporary American artists emerged during the 1920s.

Eventually, most people felt MoMA had filled a very important gap.

I cry out for order and find it only in art.

We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band and jump in a river holding hands.

One of the things about creativity is you can be in denial about these things. When I found out I had cancer, there were four hours in which I was pounding my head on the marble kitchen top saying, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” But then I felt as if this little army in uniform was flooding me. They had come to help me fight it. I felt really strong about it after that. It was one of the strongest periods of my life.

There’s no collection that has a better representation of post-war American art than David Geffen’s.

Good art will speak to you if you give it a chance.

I got more publicity for not doing a festival than for doing the festival.

They decided to establish a museum of modern art where works by contemporary artists would be shown. Mother was viewed as a very progressive person, and not everybody liked the paintings she bought.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

If you hold onto the beauty and inspiration and the clarity that is music, you will have an anchor, you will not be too far swayed by what the world is.

This type of soul, this type of art takes a while to cook. It’s like when my wife cooks for me and I always ask for greens. She never wants to cook the greens because they take three hours to cook.

Mother’s taste was eclectic and ranged from the ancient world to the contemporary from Europe to the U.S.

From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.