A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.
A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.
The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.
If you’re are paralyzed with fear it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.
What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses theinitiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defendmakes them timorous.
When deliberating, think in campaigns and not battles; in wars and notcampaigns; in ultimate conquest and not wars.
The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
There’s a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.
When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.
Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.
Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.
To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.
Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it’s for failure.
Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart.
The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.
The part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Besides, what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty? Isn’t that the whole point of healing?
The hack is like a politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He’s a demagogue. He panders.
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.
…she (the artist, the writer) doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.
The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.
The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.
The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.
It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.
A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.
No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That’s why they call it rewriting.
The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on.
It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
This man has conquered the world! What have you done?”The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.
Fame Imperishable and glory that will never die — that is what we march for!
Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.
As powerful as is our soul’s call, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. We’re not alone if we’ve been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us.