“Isn’t it wonderful to be alive? You know, you can forget all about it. Then suddenly you remember, and think of all the things you can do. Here I am. I can walk around. I can talk. I can see things and remember things. I am alive. How wonderful.”
– Sophia Loren
Isn’t it wonderful to be alive?
Crazy
“I oscillate between thinking I am crazy, and thinking I am not crazy enough.”
– Joyce Carol Oates
State of Mind
“The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.”
– Henri Matisse
Crisis
“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.”
— Andy Grove
Patience
“Patience, I believe, is a core competency of a healthy civilization.”
– Stewart Brand
Boy, I hurried…
“Boy, I hurried… I hurried for a long time. I’m sorry I did. All the time you’re hurrying, you’re not really as aware as you should be. You’re trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen. You follow me?”
– Bob Dylan
Conditions I Don’t Want
“How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”
—Jerry Colonna
Care Enough
“You really can change the world if you care enough.”
– Marian Wright Edelman
Enough
“Enough is a decision not an amount.”
– Alison Faulkner
Learn To Relax
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax…”
– William S. Burroughs
Rule of 3 In Conversation
“Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.”
– Kevin Kelly
Something Worth Noticing
“The body of work you’re creating adds up over time. The consistency and empathy of your vision will seep through. Drip by drip, you’ll create something worth noticing.”
– Crickets by Seth Godin
Laughter
“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
― Anne Lamott
Audience Capture
“Audience capture is an irresistible force in the world of influencing, because it’s not just a conscious process but also an unconscious one. While it may ostensibly appear to be a simple case of influencers making a business decision to create more of the content they believe audiences want, and then being incentivized by engagement numbers to remain in this niche forever, it’s actually deeper than that. It involves the gradual and unwitting replacement of a person’s identity with one custom-made for the audience.”
The Perils of Audience Capture, by Gurwinder
(via Bailey)
Five Rules of Being a Grown-Up
You must not have anything wrong with you, or anything different about you.
If you have something wrong or different about you, you really need to correct it. You need to be able to pass under all circumstances.
If you can’t correct it, or change it in any way, you should just pretend that you have. It’s not a problem anymore. Good news!
If you can’t even pretend not to have corrected the situation, you should just not show up, because it’s very painful for the rest of us to see you in your current condition.
If you’re going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to be ashamed.
– Salon Tom Weston’s Five Rules of Being A Grown-Up
(via Ann Lammott in this interview)
Despair
“Despair is a failure of the imagination.”
– Wade Davis
Creativity
“Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.”
– Arthur Koestler
The Next Note
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”
– Miles Davis
Our Real Work
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
– Wendell Berry
Hold Your Love
“The right person will know how to hold your love. The right person will choose you just as deeply as you choose them. You will not have to quiet the way you care, you will never feel like you are too much. You will not have to beg for the love you deserve. One day, you will be met where you are. One day, you will be someone’s favorite thing, and you will not be confused you will not feel like you are fighting for someone who isn’t fighting for you. One day, you will understand that it never mattered how tightly you held on to the wrong people, how intensely you tried, because the right people were always going to find you. The right people were always going to stay.”
– A Gentle Reminder by Bianca Sparacino
You Are What You Love
“You are what you love, not what loves you. ”
― Charlie Kaufman
The World
“You don’t see the world as it is – you see the world as you are”.
– The Talmud
Books
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero