“Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.”

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

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

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 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.

Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous.

Learn to use your brains as deftly as your powder box, and then maybe you have a powder box and do not need.

The brain, is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your god like a soldier.

If critics have problems with my personal life, it’s their problem. Anybody with half a brain would realize that it’s the charts that count.

What I appreciate is acknowledging to the audience that I think they have brains.

To count – really and truly to count – a woman must have goodness or brains.

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.

If I’m not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw ’em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we’ll have a unique song by the end of it.