I was kicked out of school because of my attitude. I was not assimilating. So I went to work, taking any jobs I could get.

I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I'd have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.

I just try to try to keep an attitude that I don't know what I'm doing. Not to the point where I'm beating myself up, but I just go in thinking that I have a lot to learn. And I hope I still have that attitude 30 years from now.

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.

There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

You don't have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

I never planned to join Black Sabbath - it just happened. It was back in 1979 when they were celebrating their 10th anniversary.

Kenzo were celebrating their 30th anniversary, and they did this big, huge show in Paris and invited back all the models who'd walked for them in the 30-year era. How I found myself in the mix, I'll never know.

The anniversary of the tragic attacks on September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2012, is a day to remember those who died and suffered. It is also an opportunity to open a new dialogue on the tactics and strategies that have been successful - and unsuccessful - in confronting, containing, and defeating the threat from radical Islam.

Presently, the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History has been brought about to encourage and sponsor a variety of historical activities that advance our understanding of the American Jewish experience as it marks this milestone anniversary.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15, 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

'Easter' is a movable event, calculated by the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the hero of a solar myth.

This unthinking assumption of moral virtue on the Left is frustrating. I saw someone on Facebook talking about capitalist scum, he was angry and thought it was OK because his anger was righteous.

Learning how to center and control anger, fear, sadness, weakness and learning how to channel that into something smart, cerebralizing it, meditating on it and then moving into it with wisdom - that's important.

It's frustrating to see part of your body not responding - even more so given the way I am and the way I like to train and always give 100 per cent. You experience sadness, anger, and powerlessness... you really want to do something, but you can't. In the end, however, you have to be honest with yourself and those around you.