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.

Artists, writers and people in creative fields are entrepreneurs by necessity. Nobody gives them a paycheck or picks up their medical insurance. The ones who succeed learn to think and act like 'independent operators.' I think people who are technically 'employees' have to think this way as well. The company is not looking out for you.

Don't cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you've got.

The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.

The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don't create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.