All the rich people collect traditional Chinese art. So it's very natural for Chinese families to still see art as the highest human performance and send their children to this field.
Seriously, if you want to get inside the head of a stand-up comic, you could do a lot worse than reading Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, all about how he developed his career and his creativity as a comedian. Lots of what he talks about is relevant to anyone in the creative arts - you find yourself, your voice, your technique and then maybe luck calls.
I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.
When I got enough confidence, the stage was gone. When I was sure of losing, I won. When I needed people the most, they left me. When I learnt to dry my tears, I found a shoulder to cry on. And when I mastered the art of hating, somebody started loving me.
To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.
Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand - in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science - he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.
Tiger Woods is like a piece of fine art that belongs in the Louvre, and so, too, is Scott Medlock's painting of Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia...a true masterpiece!
Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other; each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.
What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires - how many aspirations after goodness and truth - how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!