I think if your goal is for everything to be okay, that's a mistake. To achieve that goal, the only obstacle you'd have to face tomorrow is to eliminate all risk ... I've made the decision that I'm never trying to make everything okay. I'm trying for there to be more loose ends, not fewer loose ends.

I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since.

Art is the work of a human, an individual seeking to make a statement, to cause a reaction, to connect. Art is something new, every time, and art might not work, precisely because it's new, because it's human and because it seeks to connect.

Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told. And most people who are doing what they are told feel safe; it feels reliable.

The enemy of fear is creativity.

Now for the first time, you can choose yourself. You can be responsible for what you do and how you do it. You have to do the hard work of finding and pleasing an audience.

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it