Authenticity

Being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are. There is no choice, either you is or you ain't.

And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.

Be a hero in your own life. Do the bold thing, do the honorable thing. Do the thing that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Do it for the simple heroic reason you feel it's right.

The hardest thing in the world is to let yourself know what you know. Because life is noisy. Everything we're told, everything about the way we're raised and educated and bombarded by our culture makes noise. And that noise makes it very hard to hear the ticking of our own hearts.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive.

Saying things are terrible does not automatically establish the reliability of your account. The habitual naysayer is no more to be trusted than the habitual cheerleader.

The hardest thing in the world is to see what is actually in front of you, unmediated by your own expectations, theories, and wishes about what should be there.

In a society that systematically limits feelings, I hope you will not be afraid to fight for them.

The work itself is the reward, and if I choose challenging work, it'll pay me back with interest. At least I'll be interested, even if nobody else is.