It's very important to acknowledge the moment that we are in and say 'In this moment, conditions are non-ideal.' But it's also worth remembering that it's when conditions are non-ideal that almost every single creative breakthrough happens because creative breakthroughs only occur when what was working isn't working anymore.

Writer's block... isn't real, and it's real at the same time. It's just misnamed fear—fear of bad writing, fear of ridicule, fear of being seen as a fraud and an imposter.

There are only two kinds of sufferings in your life: physical suffering and mental suffering ... Once there is a little space between you and your body and between you and your mind, this is the end of suffering.

Charging is part of the story. And money is a story because the paper is not worth anything—it's a story about who we are, and what we've got, and what we're capable of. And so what we get is the privilege of showing up with something we made and saying 'I have a story for sale, and if you don't want the story, I'll send you somewhere else. But if you do want the story, this is how much it costs.'

What we know in a business context is that ignoring sunk cost is one of the single smartest things you can ever do.

Can you do any aspect of life without involvement? ... Without involvement would you know what is the joy of food? What is the joy of breathing? What is the joy of people around you? What is the joy of love? ... Without involvement, there is no life.

When I was 18, my English teacher told me I reminded her of a young Hemingway, and I said, 'Because I'm a good writer?' And she said, 'No, I think you're an alcoholic who's going to kill himself.'

Any time we're getting a signal from our subconscious that we're playing a little too close to the shiny bright objects, we should explore it a little bit because that might be exactly where we need to go.

You can only desire what you already know. You cannot desire something that you do not know. So, if you're going toward something that you know in a slightly modified way, that is not called transformation. You go toward something that you don't know, something that is new—that is why, always, when it comes to spiritual process or mysticism, we use the word 'seeker.' You are a genuine seeker only if you have realized 'I do not know.' If you know where to go, then you are not a seeker; you're just a traveler, maybe.

People who are creatives bristle at the idea of genre because they think it has something to do with generic. It has nothing to do with generic. It's the opposite of generic.

Over the years, I have figured out that my work gets dramatically better and my life gets better when I do the work, simply the work, merely the work, disconnecting from the outcome.

I find the older I get, the more artists I know, the more I respect people who... in the doing of the work, hold themselves before it's finished to a really high standard.

Airlines talk about having loyalty programs. Airlines have no loyalty. For a dollar we switch airlines.

Loyalty is a price we pay because we are telling ourselves a story about who we are and where we used to be. If there is no price, there is no loyalty.

Sunk costs are the very common human desire to stick with something that was hard to get in the first place.

Form is essential to giving us the vessel that our creativity can fit into, and if you skip over the discussion with yourself about form, you have really hindered your ability to do the work with the impact you hope for.

Hobbies are important. Everyone should have them. Hobbies are about authenticity and personal satisfaction. You shouldn't do your hobby for someone else, and you shouldn't try to sell your hobby or look for market acceptance for your hobby because that's why it's your hobby.

When you pick your audience, you pick your future. And you don't get the right to pick the audience you want and expect them to behave the way you want them to; they're going to behave the way they behave.

My blog intentionally doesn't use 80% of the features that WordPress would let it have because if I took those constraints away, I couldn't do a blog post tomorrow.