Exculsive Extras: Wisdom of Celebrities Around the World

Award-winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman traveled to seven countries, flew 65,000 miles, and drove 5,000 more, all in a quest to ask 50 distinguished individuals ages 65 years and older what they would like others to know.

By Andrew Zuckerman

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Chuck Close: "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work."

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Buzz Aldrin: "If we keep looking only at where our feet are going, we may walk off the cliff...But if we can look up and look ahead...there’s a greater chance that we’ll live more productive lives. "

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Chuck Close: "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work."

CHUCK CLOSE – painter; photographer; printmaker

"The advice I like to give to young artists, or really anybody, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.

Now that my children are grown, I work essentially 365 days of the year. Any day that you just do a little something, all those little pieces of something add up and it continues the momentum."

BUZZ ALDRIN -- One of two men to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission; winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom; author, six books

"When opportunities came along to expand my horizons, whether it was a Rhodes scholarship or whatever it was, I availed myself of the opportunity and then accepted the results as they came out. When it looked like I could finesse my way into the space program without having gone through test pilot training, I felt that it was more important to have a little bit of professional knowledge enhancement in certain areas, that not everyone has to be a stick and rudder, a smooth, quick-responsive controlling person. There’s room for lots of those people, and we need them; but we need the deep thinker, the person who can think ahead and be creative, the person who can look beyond the immediate problem. If we keep looking only at where our feet are going, we may walk off the cliff. We may miss a great opportunity. But if we can look up and look ahead—look forward—there’s a greater chance that we’ll live more productive lives. "

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