“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.”

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.

Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.

As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Don’t cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you’ve got.

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.

Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It’s nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

A wedding is and event, but marriage is a life.

The older you get, the more you learn to see what you’ve been taught to see. When you’re a kid, you see what’s there.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Let’s create an integrated global community where we have shared benefits and responsibilities, and we don’t fight because of our differences.

She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.

You just can’t believe how quickly things happen in football and the way life turns. I went from being the bad guy, the worst player who gets all the criticism, to being the player who makes the difference and scores the important goals.

Truth is, I’ve always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.

But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.