What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop?
We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.
Warfare is theatre, I have said, and the essence of theatre is aritifce. What we show, we will not do. What we don't show, we will do.
There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down...
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating se...
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.
Don’t prepare. Begin.
Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what T...
It. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? chances are you are.
You’re supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth. I understood. The eagle was telling me...
When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.
The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket.
The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and co...
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one's existence. An illness, a cross to bear. Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The...
The Spartan king Agesilaus was still fighting in armor when he was eighty-two. Picasso was painting past ninety, and Henry Miller was chasing women (I'm sure Picasso was too) at eighty-nine.Once we tu...
The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.
The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.