Maira Kalman

“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.”

“I don't like anything permanent; I have to be able to flee. You have to be able to flee at a moment's notice.”

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

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

“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.”

“Isn't that the only way to curate a life? To live among things that make you gasp with delight?”

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

“If you go too fast you might not notice everything. On the other hand, you don't want to be late.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

“If I could never work again and I could just listen to music and walk, I'd be very, very happy.”

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

“I don't like plots. I don't know what a plot means. I can't stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning - you know, 'beginning, middle and end.'”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't believe in politics; I don't understand any of it.”