"Everything's impossible until somebody does it."

"No one can't tell you you can't learn about yourself. No one can't tell you you can't push yourself to your limits. No one can't tell you you can't surround yourself with inspiring people and stay away from those who put you down. You can't control everything. In fact, most of the things in life you have no control. But these are some things you can."

"Everything was impossible until someone did it. Do the things that inspire us and can inspire others. But we can't do that if we don't look for it. What would this world be like if 80% of the people did what they loved to do. Now I will leave you with one question. What is the work that you cannot stand to do?" What is one work that you absolutely would love to do?

From TedTalk: How to Find  and Do Work We Love by Scott Dinsmore

"Everthing's impossible until somebody does it."  - Bruce Wayne. Startup quote. 

"Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life."

Algernon: Well, what shall we do?
Jack: Nothing!
Algermon: It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

[ ...]

Jack: This ghastly state of things is what you call Bumburying I suppose?
Algermon: Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life.
Jack:  Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here.
Algemon: That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
Jack: Serious Bumburyist? Good Heavens!
Algemon: Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life. I happen to be serious about Bumburying. What on earth you are serious about I haven't got the remotest idea. About everything, I should fancy. You have such an absolutely trivial nature.

From The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

"The trick is not caring what EVERYONE thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you."

"The trick is not caring what EVERYONE thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you."

By Brian Michael Bendis

"We have to be constantly jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

"The good earth - we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy."

"We have to be constantly jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

From If This isn't nice, What is?: Advice for the Young by Kurt Vonnegut

"You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life. Say thank you."

Dear Sugar,

I read your column religiously. I'm twenty-two. From what I can tell by your writing, you're in your early forties. My question is short and sweet: What would you tell your twentysomething self if you could talk to her now?

Love,
Seeking Wisdom

Dear Seeking Wisdom,

Stop worrying about whether you're fat. You're not fat. Or rather, you're sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.  [...]

There are some things you can't understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It's good you've worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness. [...]

Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. Your are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday You don't know what it is yet.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give in. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do.

Your assumption about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naive pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you. [...]

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. Those things are you becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that saved you months to buy, don't look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don't hold it up and say it's longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

Yours,
Sugar

From  Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

"This is not rocket science here, people. Start with time for what'smost important."

"Terry Monaghan's approach to time management is simple: You can't manage time. Time never changes. There will always and ever be 168 hours in a week. What you can manage are the activities you choose to do in time. And what busy and overwhelmed people need to realize, she said, is that you will never be able to do everything you think you need, want, or should do. "When we die, the e-mail in-box will still be full. The to-do list will still be there. But you won't," she told us. "Eighty-percent of the email that comes in is crap anyway, and it takes you the equivalent of nineteen and a half weeks a year just to sort through. Eighty percent of your to-do list is crap. Look, the stuff of life never ends. That is life. You will never clear your plate so you can finally allow yourself to get the good stuff. So you have to decide. What do you want to accomplish in this life? What's important to you right now? And realize that what's important now may not be two years from now. It's always changing."

Monaghan looks at us starting forlornly at our blank Perfect Schedules. She sighs. "This is not rocket science here, people," she says. "Start with time for what's most important."

But that's where I got stuck. Everything seemed important. My work. My family. My friends. My community. Changing the kitty litter. Sorting my daughter's Barbie shoes. Keeping the incoming tide if clutter in the house at bay....

P.256

"The essence of their advice all seemed to boil down to what my kids learned in preschool: Plan. Do. Review. Take time to figure out what's important in the moment and what you want to accomplish in life. If you're ambivalent, notice it. Pick something anyway. Embrace it. Play. Try one approach. Assess. If that isn't working, ditch it and play with something else. Keep yourself accountable but enjoy the process. There is no right answer. This is life."

P.266

"Working continuously, without breaks, is in fact a surefire way to produce subpar work. Scientists have long known that, during sleep, the brain consolidates new information and skills by making new connections between neurons, effectively rewiring the brain. Neuroscientists in Sydney have found that that rewiring happens during the day as well, when we take a break. [...] Pulsing - deactivating and reactivating the brain - actually makes it pay better attention. The brain evolved to detect and respond to change, always alert to danger."

"Breaks also inspire creativity. Scientists have found that people who take time to daydream score higher on tests of creativity. And there's a very good biochemical reason why your best ideas and those flashes of insight tend to come not when you've got your nose to the grindstone, oh ideal worker, but in the shower."

P.267-8

"But as our time horizons grow shorter [as we grow older and realize we have only a short amount of time left in life], we start to see the world differently. We start to see that what matters most are often the simple things - the smell of roses, watching your grandchildren splash in a puddle, the smile on a face of an old friend you're meeting for coffee. It's those little moments that you start to focus on." And by focusing on what's important and beauty of the small moments, she said. Older people are actually happier.

P.272

"Be silent everyday. Even if that means taking five breaths. Being mindful for less than a half hour a day will, literally, expand your brain."

"Choose ONE thing that's most important to do every day."

"Find Your Own Private Netherlands."

"Understand the story that drives your flavor of "not enough." Notice it. Get clear about how you define success, what you want and your time horizon. As Steve Jobs said, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

"Banish busyness."

"Live an authentic life."

P279-286 - Appendix: Do One Thing

From Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play when No One Has The Time. By Brigid Schulte. 

"Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing."

From Introduction of the Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

"Sooner or later," V.S. Pritchett wrote in 1941 essay, "the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing." But this is not all completely true with all artists. Every artists had a different routine but a very unique one.

"In that sense, this is a superficial book. It's about the circumstances of creative activity, not the product; it deals with manufacturing rather than meaning. But it's also, inevitably, personal. My underlying concerns in the book are issues that I struggle with in my own life: How do you do meaningful creative work while also earning a living? Is it better to devote yourself wholly to a project or to set aside a small portion of each day? And when there doesn't seem to be enough time for all you hope to accomplish, must you give things up (sleep, income, a clean house), or can you learn to condense activities, to do more in less time, to "work smarter, not harder," as my dad is always telling me? More broadly are comfort and creativity incompatible, or is the opposite true: Is finding a basic level of daily comfort a prerequisite for sustained creative work?"

Below is a selection of random quotes from the book.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

"Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straight forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers."

William James (1842-1910)

"The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation."

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

"Do you know what moviemaking is?" Bergman asked in a 1964 interview. "Eight hours of hard work each day to get three minutes of film. And during those eight hours there are maybe only ten or twelve minutes, if you're lucky, of real creation. And maybe they don't come. Then you have to gear yourself for another eight hours and pray you're going to get your good ten minutes this time."

John Adams (b. 1947)

"My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits," Adams said in a recent interview. "Because creativity, particularity the kind of work I do - which is writing large-scale pieces, either symphonic music or opera music -s is just, it's very labor-intensive. And it's something that you can't do with an assistant. You have to do it all by yourself."

Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

"I wish I had a routine for writing," Miller told an interviewer in 1999. "I get up in the morning and I go out to my studio and I write. And then I tear it up! That's the routine, really. Then, occasionally, something sticks. And then I follow that. The only image I can think of is a man walking around with an iron rod in his hand during a lightning storm."