Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.

Creativity makes life useful to us. It also makes us useful to life.

Here's what I like about God: Trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, a lot of his creatures are funny looking, and he made it all anyway. He didn't let the aardvark convince him he had no business designing creatures. He didn't make a puffer fish and get discouraged, no, the maker made things - and still does.

At root, a pearl is a 'disturbance' a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. ... The pearl's beauty is made as a result of insult.

What payoff are you getting for remaining stuck at this point in your expansion?

Exercise often moves us straight from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect.

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.