The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for.

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?”

People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.

happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.

99% of your thoughts are useless.

You have the ability to decide what you think. Or, you can choose NOT to think.

“How do I train myself to stop thinking useless thoughts?” Awareness. That’s where it starts. Every time you start drifting off, become aware of it. Just observe your brain. Step outside yourself and just observe the crazy shit you’re thinking about.

Set priorities on Sunday. I outline my weekly priorities and what I want to have accomplished by the following Sunday.

Map out work, play, fit, and push. Work: For each day, I outline my “Top 3,” meaning the three most important things I will have accomplished by the end of the day.

Play: Play enables me to self-express, reflect, and give my ideas space, which shows up positively in my work.

Fit: Movement keeps ideas moving forward so I aim to move my body for at least 30 minutes each day.

Push: Since learning and growth is important to me, I do something that scares me (almost) every day. This may be asking someone whom I deeply respect for an interview or writing about a topic that makes me feel vulnerable.

Batch your days. Batching actions into specific days and creating time for creativity.

CREATE on Monday/Wednesday/Friday: I create holes in my schedule for thinking and creating. On these days, I pay attention to my body and take breaks as needed.

CALLS and MEETINGS on Tuesday/Thursday: When possible, I avoid phone calls and meetings because I find them typically unproductive and often easy to solve via email.

SPONTANEOUS Saturday: With so much structure, I make room for spontaneity. On Saturday, I let go and go where the day takes me. Balancing structure with a day of free-spiritedness makes me feel whole.

INTENTIONAL Sunday: Plan for the week ahead.

Doing 20 minutes of stretching, light weights and floor exercises three times a week takes the same amount of time as a long coffee break - and eating a tuna fish salad, sardines on toast or scrambled eggs is surely preferable to a Big Mac or KFC.

To be able to walk out the door when you come home from a job and wander into the garden to do a bit of watering gives you time to be creative in your mind.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.

Our enemies are our outward consciences.

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

The moral equation strongly tells everyone who understands freedom, who understands morality, that Israel is engaging in a just war in defense of its people and its freedom.

I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.

But Tommy Lee Jones is just smooth. He's just the real deal. I'm captivated by him because there's so little of that in Hollywood, and he just embodies it.

I used to sleep nude - until the earthquake.

Also, I just think of Draco and he gets me in the right mood. He just keeps getting worse and worse.

Men arent really complicated ... They are very simple literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what theyve said when really its obvious.

Real love brings pain. Real love means sacrifices and hurts and all the thousand shocks of life. But it also means beauty, true beauty.

I didn't know much about Texas when I moved there for graduate school. In my first or second semester, I took a class in life and literature of the Southwest, and that's where I first heard about these events along the border in 1915-1918, what Anglos called the Bandit Wars.

The 1910 Edison film of 'Frankenstein' was itself a dead thing revived by technology.

Gertrude Stein really thought of Hemingway as frail. He almost married Stein.

I can give anyone a hard time.

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Fully to surrender to love can be terrifying. But it is the price life asks in exchange for the possibility of ecstasy.

Blessed are the weird people “ poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters & troubadours “ for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

If people want to go do some big outdoor thing for their ego, have them climb snowy mountains rather than shoot animals.

Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.