“We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.”

Being judgmental is cheap. Any fool can do it.

Sometimes the only thing we do to avoid success is refuse to be energetic on our own behalf

Being judgmental about your own behavior is actually another cop-out because it makes you feel as though you’re doing something virtuous.

DO IT RIGHT, DO IT WRONG, BUT DO IT. Squeeze your eyes shut and jump. Because a wonderful thing happens then. Your focus shifts from yourself, your nervousness, and your imagined inadequacies to the task at hand.

Time is clay; make something.

The environment that creates winners is almost always made up of winners.

Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.

Everyone has unique gifts and talents. What you love is what you’re gifted at. To be completely happy, to live a completely fulfilled life, you have to do what you love.

Doing your own thing is a generous act. Being gifted creates obligations, which means you owe the world your best effort at the work you love. You too are a natural resource.

Resentment is weak and lowers your self-esteem.

Find what you love, because greatness is based on great gifts. If you love something, you can count on the fact that you are genetically gifted at it.

You cannot tell your heart what it wants. Your heart will tell you

Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish.

When you play it too safe, you’re taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we’re given.

The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act.

Sometimes life isn’t about who you were or are, but it’s about who you are becoming.

While the accompanimental [sic] figures come from Prelude, the melody is wholly original to this theme. First stated on a lonely duduk, and then in octaves by the violins and violas, it is a melancholy and contemplative tune.

I had studied the violin to a certain amount of success. At some point, I realized that I didnt really like the violin. I was only doing it because I could, and I was good at it, and everyone was encouraging me. But I didnt have a great love for it.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

Love is not love, without a violin playing goat.

Happiness isn’t happiness unless there’s a violin-playing goat.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.