“Life goes by very fast. And the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.”

You’re not going to be persistent and tenacious enough if you don’t love what you’re doing. If it’s not something that excites you, that appeals to you deep down inside.

Everybody in life is struggling for power, and some people use morality and righteousness as a weapon, while others use different means, even passive aggression. From a distance, we are all fighting, and I am looking at this from a distance.

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.

Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.

Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.

You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.

Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.

It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.

No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.

The worst thing is to sit and whine and complain and obsess about money as if that were the only sign of your worth as a human.

If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.

The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.

Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others – that is too high a price to pay.

If you’re just letting the time pass at your job, it’s just dead time and you’ll never get it back. If at that job you’re learning and you’re observing and you’re seeing about people and connections, it’s suddenly alive time.

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.

Creativity follows mastery, so mastery of skills is the first priority for young talent.

America became a great nation early on not because it was flooded with politicians, but because it was flooded with people who understood the value of personal responsibility, hard work, creativity, innovation, and that’s what will get us on the right track now, as well.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.

Creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

I’m always throwing out ideas, so it’s not creativity, it’s just volume.

I need to find avenues to express all of my creativity. There’s always polarizing forces. Sometimes I feel like my work is going in different directions, but hopefully it’s just expanding.

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.