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.

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.

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.

Live simply that others may simply live.

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life.

God created us to thrive on encouragement from others.

Purgatory fire will be more intolerable than all the torments that can be felt or conceived in this life.

Anyone can come into your life and say how much they love you. It takes someone really special to stay in your life and show how much they love you.

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.

The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs... one step at a time.

I am proud of Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, but where is it on the index of global financial centres? Sixty-fourth. Below Hamilton, Casablanca and Mauritius. London, by contrast, is second only to New York. That's a link worth keeping.

What's the biggest commercial for aggression, sexuality and materialism? What gets pumped into these kids' heads? Taking someone else's girl, which is so laissez-faire in hip-hop, will get you killed in the streets, but it doesn't seem to be an issue when you hear it on the radio.

I was a real mess at school. I got a bit of a reputation for being the weird girl: the girl who'd go silent randomly and just kind of write down replies to people's questions in a book.

We must have moral education in the schools, anti-bullying programs, but this does not mean programs to feminize boys.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

Fame and money and all that - you hear people say it a lot, but they don't mean a thing to me.

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Especially in the food business, critics take very seriously how much power they have. They can shut a restaurant down.

Chiropractic works in harmony with the basic healing forces of the body whereas the allopathic western medical establishment doesnt have nearly as holistic a vision.

One cannot forsake the security of Israelis.

Spiritual people don't float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

I took all my wax studies and threw them in the fire... that's the way it is when something unpleasant happens to me. I take my hammer and I squash a figure.

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