Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever you want. It's the willingness to do whatever you want.

People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.

My life is mine and I form it. Tell yourself this often. Create your own life now, using your beliefs as an artist uses color.

We can't suddenly quit a job and then race to find a form of art that will pay off before the next mortgage payment is due. Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it … Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.

Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist

Your turn Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Go. Do that.

The only real help is self-help. Anything else is just designed to get you to the point where you can help yourself.