three from the clippings stack

From Emme Nelson-Baxter's profile of Butler Steltemeier:

So many people have enjoyed Steltemeier's charming and imaginative painting style that serial copyists have arisen over the years. Steltemeier lets this gently roll off her shoulders. "You're not really an artist when you copy," she says. "When people are copying me, it's the universe telling me that I've got to up my ante, that I've gotten lazy. I can let that go because I can just take two steps forward."

From "John McPhee: The Art of Nonfiction No.3" (annotated by Sam Anderson):

Stories are always really, really hard. I think it's totally rational for a writer, no matter how experience he has, to go right down in confidence to almost zero when you sit down to start something. Why not? Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.

Pete Hamill, quoted in a Women's Wear Daily review of the year in fashion (December 12, 2011):

Nothing surprises me, particularly men and their propensity to be fools. I've done it myself at different pointsl people do it all the time. What would Chaucer have written about if men were perfect? Why would we have ever invented the blues in this country if men were perfect?