Maira Kalman Quotes

#1. Maira Kalman says, Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.

Austin Kleon

#2. 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.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#4. I have many questions, but no patience to think them through.

Maira Kalman

#5. 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.

Maira Kalman

#6. 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.'

Maira Kalman

#7. Oh, Tocqueville, you're the man.

Maira Kalman

#8. 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.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#10. 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.

Maira Kalman

#11. The book. Calming object. Held in the hand.

Maira Kalman

#12. I like the brooding man - a brooding man with a sense of humor.

Maira Kalman

#13. Some people, surely, die on the way to something.
Then we call them the late so-and-so.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#15. Jump right in, or wade in slowly.
Advantage to one, it's over quickly.
Advantage to the other, it isn't.

Maira Kalman

#16. I'm in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I'm sure that it's going to be a complete disaster. I'm going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet Earth.

Maira Kalman

#17. My workspace is defined by books, ephemera, quiet and light. I don't have a computer, telephone or a fax machine there.

Maira Kalman

#18. Michael Pollan is a champion. In all ways. A man of great integrity, humor, and common sense and kindness.

Maira Kalman

#19. 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.

Maira Kalman

#20. I don't listen to the news. I don't read the newspaper unless it's eccentric information - and the obituaries, of course.

Maira Kalman

#21. Everyone I know is looking for solace, hope and a tasty snack.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#23. I read obituaries first thing in the morning. With a cup of coffee. This is NOT MORBID. Just epic. Maybe it's a way of trying to figure out, before the day begins, what is important. And I am curious about all the little things that make up life. Little?

Maira Kalman

#24. 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.

Maira Kalman

#25. I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.

Maira Kalman

#26. Go out and walk. That is the glory of life,

Maira Kalman

#27. It is impossible to know what fate will bring. If you love to write or paint, you will keep on writing or painting, and things will either work out or not, and you just have to keep being in the process.

Maira Kalman

#28. I don't believe in politics; I don't understand any of it.

Maira Kalman

#29. 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.

Maira Kalman

#30. Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud?

Maira Kalman

#31. If something does go wrong, here is my advice ... KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#33. 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.

Maira Kalman

#34. Washing dishes is the anecdote to confusion. I know that for a fact.

Maira Kalman

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

Maira Kalman

#36. The ability to take a walk from one point to the next point, that is half the battle won.

Maira Kalman

#37. I truly believe there's always a solution to every problem.

Maira Kalman

#38. What protects you in this world from sadness and from the loss of an ability to do something? ... Work and love.

Maira Kalman

#39. 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.

Maira Kalman

#40. Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.

Maira Kalman

#41. I don't want to trudge up insane mountains or through war-torn lands. Just a nice stroll through the hill and dale. But now I walk everywhere in the city. Any city. You see everything you need to see in a lifetime. Every emotion. Every condition. Every fashion. Every glory.

Maira Kalman

#42. I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten.

Maira Kalman

#43. Useless and precious objects. Taking up space. Taking up time.

Maira Kalman

#44. All terrific but the people. THE PEOPLE. Everyone looks so exalted, or so wretched, or so spiffy, so funny, so splendid. If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour.

Maira Kalman

#45. It's almost impossible to reconcile the realities of how one feels during the day, hour by hour. But I approach things not cynically.

Maira Kalman