“The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He’s petrified.”

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.

The professional will not tolerate disorder… He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.

It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

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.

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perserverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.

In order to access a warrior’s courage, we must explore why we are so committed to our story and what we are afraid will happen if we give it up.

That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.

I chose life over death for myself and my friends. I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

No matter how low you go, there’s always an unexplored basement.

No matter how low you go, there’s always an unexplored basement.

One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.

My goal is not to shove information into your head. It’s to find ways to reignite the curiosity that we all had as children for the natural world. You don’t have to tell a child to explore the backyard.

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.