Quotes & Sayings About Making Something Work

I'm not totally blind to the fact that I like people to see my work, but if it's not something I would enjoy seeing in a magazine, then I think I shouldn't be making it. I think that I don't represent only myself, I represent more people; I mean, if I like it, then I think more people will like it because I think I'm quite a normal guy. — Anton Corbijn

A tall man in a plaid work shirt stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "Can I buy you a drink, little lady?" I reached back and got Jason's hand. I raised it where it was visible. "Taken. Sorry." There was more than one reason I'd wanted to bring Jason with me to a bar on a Friday night. He stared down at Jason, way down, making a show of how very tall he was. "Don't you want something a little bigger?" "I like them small," I said, my face very serious. "It makes oral sex easier." We left him speechless. Jason was laughing so hard, he could barely keep his feet. I pulled him through the crowd by the hand. Holding his hand seemed to be hint enough for the rest of the cruising males. The — Laurell K. Hamilton

Alexander speaks. Anthony, I'm going to tell you something. In 1941, when I met your mother, she had turned seventeen and was working at the Kirov factory, the largest weapons production facility in the Soviet Union. Do you know what she wore? A ratty brown cardigan that belonged to her grandmother. It was tattered and patched and two sizes too big for her. Even though it was June, she wore her much larger sister's black skirt that was scratchy wool. The skirt came down to her shins. Her too-big thick black cotton stockings bunched up around her brown work boots. Her hands were covered in black grime she couldn't scrub off. She smelled of gasoline and nitrocellulose because she had been making bombs and flamethrowers all day. And still I came every day to walk her home. — Paullina Simons

Writing and making films aren't different things to me. Or maybe it has become so, now. Making film is a very long process and you have to be physically strong. The literary work is more mystical, because it's only the writer, and connected to something inside. — Abdellah Taia

Lily had to admit, she liked the way Connell McCormick peeked at her over the rims of his spectacles. From his corner spot of the deserted dining room, behind his stacks of books, he pretended to work. But she could feel his gaze upon her, tickling her, making her insides flutter. There was something about his intense green eyes and his attempts to hide his obvious fascination with her that warmed her and made her feel womanly in a way she hadn't experienced before. — Jody Hedlund

We make thousands of decisions everyday in automatic mode without a mistake. Yet we don't reflect and celebrate this wonderful mode of human decision making at work rather, we put the blow torch on the one moment when it doesn't work and something goes wrong. — Rob Long

There are a million people who can come up with little bits. The hard work is making those bits into something. — Jeff Lynne

It's the old who need work. They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it - making the young work and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. — Rose Macaulay

I believe that music is about making quality things, making quality art, and no matter who you decide to work with, you and that person have to come up with something special, come up with something that is excellent material, so whoever hears it and reviews it will like it. — Common

In my world, we don't have the time or the energy to bullshit about our feelings or worry about anyone else's. When I've found myself in professional situations, I'm driven nearly to distraction by how much fucking effort is wasted making sure we all feel nice and fuzzy and comfortable. I don't get that; it's not part of work to me. And it keeps me from getting ahead. If someone asks me my opinion on something, I simply give it. I don't bother spending five minutes talking about the weather and how lovely your shirt is first. I figure nobody's getting paid to win the office nice competition. — Linda Tirado

Why would you apologize for what you read for pleasure? Just think of the illiteracy rate. Every book read for pleasure should be celebrated. And novels that celebrate love, commitment, relationships, making relationships work, why isn't that something to be respected? — Nora Roberts

They're making so few movies that you really just have to make it. It's going to be the only way you end up getting work. I don't believe anyone's going to really go out on a limb and just throw millions of dollars on someone that's not been proven. They're going to have to show somebody something at some point. — Dax Shepard

For me, making films is about trying to work something out by myself in quite a lonely way. I find the whole thing very lonely really. — Andrea Arnold

The Lord gave the wonderful promise of the free use of His Name with the Father in conjunction with doing His works. The disciple who lives only for Jesus' work and Kingdom, for His will and honor, will be given the power to appropriate the promise. Anyone grasping the promise only when he wants something very special for himself will be disappointed, because he is making Jesus the servant of his own comfort. But whoever wants to pray the effective prayer of faith because he needs it for the work of the Master will learn it, because he has made himself the servant of his Lord's interests. — Andrew Murray

When you write a program, think of it primarily as a work of literature. You're trying to write something that human beings are going to read. Don't think of it primarily as something a computer is going to follow. The more effective you are at making your program readable, the more effective it's going to be: You'll understand it today, you'll understand it next week, and your successors who are going to maintain and modify it will understand it. — Donald Knuth

I never noticed competing with other generations. There's competition within your own generation, but that competition is good. Maybe you're annoyed that somebody's getting more money than you are, but what's really annoying is if someone's painting a better painting than you're making. So it's something to think about and work toward and stay focused on. — Frank Stella

If something can be proven to work, we should try it ... Making sure that our young folk get the best education is the only thing that matters to me, and if something can be shown to work in doing that or if something's worth trying to do that, then I'll certainly be in the market for it. — Nicola Sturgeon

What meaning our lives seem to have is the work of a relatively well-constituted emotional system. As consciousness gives us the sense of being persons, our psychophysiology is responsible for making us into personalities who believe the existential game to be worth playing. We may have memories that are unlike those of anyone else, but without the proper emotions to liven those memories they might as well reside in a computer file as disconnected bits of data that never unite into a tailor-made individual for whom things seem to mean something. You can conceptualize that your life has meaning, but if you do not feel that meaning then your conceptualization is meaningless and you are nobody. — Thomas Ligotti

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. — Meg Jay

The first rule of making progress in anything you do is setting goals, allowing yourself to always have a finish line in sight. This provides a boost in motivation during those moments when slogging forward seems impossible, giving you something tangible to work towards at every moment. — T. Harv Eker

A conclusion I've come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it's really about making work into something that isn't drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing. — Tom Hodgkinson

I learned a valuable life lesson that summer. You should find something in life that you really enjoy and seriously consider making that your life's work. — Jim Evans

I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs. — Daniel Keyes

I'm so involved in the process that sometimes at the end of a day, I can look at the piece on my desk and really wonder how it got there. At other times, I really have to struggle with a piece to turn it into what I had in mind. Sometimes, I give up and leave it half finished to work on something else. Then in a few days, when I come back to it, I can see what it wants to be ... which sometimes is not at all what I had in mind. When I just let that happen, things seem to go more smoothly. — Wendy Froud

Making 'Birdsong,' on the one hand you have how prestigious it is and the reputation of the book, which is something that's an extraordinary piece of work. Sebastian Faulkes is a genius. So you feel that responsibility when you're portraying that character that he's imagined and millions of readers have pictured. — Eddie Redmayne

Making my work more visual is something I am increasingly excited about. I am hopeful that it will broaden access to some of the ideas being engaged in activist and scholarly communities of which I am part. — Dean Spade

To do great work, you need to feel that you're making a difference. That you're putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you are part of something important. — Jason Fried

Education is something that should not be organized on a for-profit basis, because in that case its purpose is not really to provide an education. It's not to teach students how to get better work, but how to provide banks with a free giveaway opportunity from the government, by making junk loans that are defaulted on. The effect may be to wreck the futures of the graduates that fall for the false promises that are being made. — Michael Hudson

Work does not "give" dignity to our lives through the excellence or happiness it fosters. The dignity of work comes less from its ideal promise than from the way we show, through it, a determination to endure what is difficult for the sake of discharging our responsibilities and contributing to society. It is less the source of our happiness than the illustration that we deserve happiness. Through work we reveal our tough minded commitment in the face of conditions that cannot bend exactly to our will. When this commitment brings a partial triumph over an unaccommodating world, work illuminates something of the dignity that resides in us independent of the character of our work. It expresses a kind of defiance, for we willfully ignore the ultimate resistance of a world we yet try to shape. Thus work reveals, though it cannot produce, the dignity of those who take their condition to be at least partly of their own making. — Russell Muirhead

Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path. — Seth Godin

A man-made thing that produces pleasure (and criticism) by somehow taping into the order of the universe is beautiful. Making beautiful things makes our lives worthwhile. My teacher, and one of the founders of the Pratt industrial design program, Rowena Reed Kostellow, said, "Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization." From a pragmatic point of view, for something to be beautiful, it has to work. In order to make this idea clearer I have combined the ideas of beauty and function into one word: Beautility. — Tucker Viemeister

Difference making, by its very nature, is the art of taking something good and making it better. It's an act of fine-tuning, improving, and refining, not starting from zero. — David Sturt

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. — Wendy Froud

Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices. And they all have something to offer and making the story better and bringing their vision to what you see in the frame. — Beau Willimon

If I look at my work from the beginning it is more the idea of trying to establish a kind of material that one can work with for the future, rather than making nostalgic images to record something that will later become lost. — Thomas Struth

You need to know a lot about what's going on, but when it comes to making the work, I take almost an anti-intellectual stance. You've got to be stupid enough, in some ways, to plunge into something that you have no idea what it's about. If you know what you're going to do before you do it, you just end up illustrating an idea ... — Tim Zuck

I think the biggest thing is just making sure that you do the work that you connect with, personally, and that you do work where you can really bring something to the table. It's just about being truthful to yourself. — Susanna White

Action that is inspired from aligned thought is joyful action. Action that is offered from a place of contridicted thought is hard work that is not satisfying and does not yield good results. When you really feel like jumping into action, that is a clear sign that your vibration is pure and you are not offering contridicting thoughts to your own desire. When you are having a hard time making yourself do something, or when the action you offer does not produce the results you are seeking, it is always because you are offering thoughts in opposition to your desire. — Esther Hicks

I love to tell stories and I love to work with directors and I think I write really visually, which I think directors like, and I love making movies, so I found something that I'm good at and I'm really happy doing. — John Orloff

I know what the value [of storytelling] is to me
varied and huge, giving me everything from delight, to knowledge, to access to friends and colleagues, a desirable identity through valued work, escape from pain, and a steady income. Not bad, for something so intangible as making and selling dream-by-number kits. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Do not settle for easy. Do not settle for that first image. Craft it, work it, and make something more out of it. And finally, don't forget that the biggest joy in photography is making pictures of those things in your own life. — David Burnett

If I read a script and find it engaging and I start making choices in my mind on how to approach the work, than that's a good indication that it is something worth pursuing. — Karl Urban

I've become a workaholic. When the shows slow down and there's no press and I can get my time to myself in the studio with my music, I get into this zone, man. I enter this incredible space where I'm just making music. And I feel like I can work with anybody - with Elton John, with Hanson - and I can make something incredible. — Wale

Acting and the industry of making movies is beautiful, but it's so exhausting and such hard work; if you don't absolutely 100% want to do something, it defeats the purpose. — Debby Ryan

When you're making something big, whether it's long-form fiction or a big piece of software, whatever that is, you're having a very intimate and extended conversation with the work materials themselves. — David Wroblewski

The reason people come to work for GE, they want to be apart of something bigger than themselves, they want to work for a company that makes a difference, a company that is doing great things in the world. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

And the whole constant mantra about how 'long-term relationships are hard work' and 'everything has its ups and downs' and 'you're going to be annoyed by their toenails' and 'stick with it' and 'the grass only looks greener' and so on. It's actually very hard to tell when you should split up with someone. All I knew was I was waking up every morning thinking this can't be it, until death. When your relationship is making you feel life's too long, something's gone awry. — Mhairi McFarlane

I feel so fortunate, Because some people think, well you're just relegated to the sideline. But I feel valued there. They trust me. We work very, very hard at making it worthwhile. We are not going to just be down there spewing a bunch of blah. With our halftime talking to the coaches we are really trying to get something meaningful there and something that helps spin the game forward. — Michele Tafoya

I think something I've been drawn to about the people I work with is that they seem to be - like me - people who are a little insane, and have to make music. It's not a choice they're making for the sake of vanity - like it's cool to be in a band. — Ariel Rechtshaid

I love watching all sorts of different types of movies, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily movies I want to be making. I'm not sitting around saying, "Man, I'd really love to direct a western." That's just not something I'm probably going to do. But, I'm just looking to work on things that both feel professionally exciting and personally relevant. — Josh Radnor

Our work and educational institutions reinforce this preference for later over now throughout our lives. In school we focus on the ends - passing the semester, making the grade, or otherwise getting it all behind us - rather than the present-moment experience of actually learning. As employees, we want the work to be over as soon as it begins. Work culture is driven by quotas, billable hours, budgets, and Gantt charts - bottom lines of any sort. The value is always somewhere ahead of you, rather than here right now, in the room with you. We're perpetually looking ahead to a payday or a weekend or some other kind of finish line. Virtually every day of our lives, we're trained to lean towards something we don't have, which essentially trains us to be dissatisfied with where we already are. — David Cain

The secret of making something work in your lives is first of all, the deep desire to make it work; then the faith and belief that it can work; then to hold that clear definite vision in your consciousness and see it working out step by step, without one thought of doubt or disbelief. — Eileen Caddy

...there is something very vital happening when we breathe - without it we die - but trying to speed it up, force it, grasp it, push it away or control it tends to get in the way. As in breathing, so in life - we can learn a lot from the natural rhythm, pace, and un-fussiness of the way breath continues its work, without making a big deal out of it. — Ed Halliwell

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared. — Hilma Wolitzer

Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty ; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself. — David Bayles

I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work." — Mark Strong

Recently I have been attacked in newspapers by two 'fabulist' writers, as far as I can make out for the ordinariness of the worlds I portray. To which the most obvious reply is that it's all very well writing about elves and dragons and goddesses rising out of the ground and the rest of it--who couldn't do that and make it colorful? (Readable, of course, is another matter...) But writing about pubs and struggling singer-songwriters--well, that's hard work. Nothing happens. Nothing happens, and yet, somehow, I have to persuade you that something is happening somewhere in the hearts and minds of my characters, even though they're just standing there drinking beer and making jokes about Peter Frampton. — Nick Hornby

And what about us?" Catcher asked.
Gabriel's eyebrows lifted. "You're part of the mystery-solving gang, aren't you?"
Catcher muttered something unflattering, and Mallory nudged him. "I presume you want us to stay here tonight?" she asked.
"It would make things easier," Gabe said.
"So we'll sleep on the couch," Catcher said, "like we're twelve-year-olds at a slumber party."
"In fairness," Ethan said, "we don't all have to sleep on the couch."
"In fairness," Catcher said, "you can kiss my ass."
"Ladies," Mallory said. "Let's put on our big-girl panties. Merit and Ethan are already sleeping in the bedroom, and there's no point in making them move. Catcher and I can take the couch. The shifters will feel better if we make this work, and it's no great loss to any of us. — Chloe Neill

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. — William Morris

We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality - to other people, the times we live in, the natural world, our character, and our own uniqueness. Our culture increasingly tends to separate us from these realities in various ways. We indulge in drugs or alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behavior, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creative activity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves. — Robert Greene

Sadhana You can experiment: arrange the best possible meal for yourself, get angry with something, curse the whole world, and then eat it. You will see that day how food behaves within you. At the next meal, approach your food with the reverence that the life-making material deserves and eat it. You will now see how it will behave within you. (Of course, if you're sensible, you'll ignore the first and only do the second!) Most people can bring down the quantum of food they are eating to a third and be much more energetic and not lose weight. It is just a question of how much receptivity you have created within yourself. Accordingly your body receives. If you can do the same amount of work, maintain all the bodily processes, with thirty percent of the food that you eat, that definitely means you are running a much more efficient machine. — Sadhguru

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work. — Michel De Montaigne

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

There's no "get rich quick." There's no "overnight success."

However, this doesn't mean that when you decide to start a business that you're just starting. You could start making new money tomorrow.

I was fishing with my son and taught him that you can't catch a fish unless your line is in the water. A truth my dad once taught me.
You may have spent years learning a skill or creating a product or service that you just simply haven't thought to monetize. Like leaving a fishing pole on the ground along side the river, but not having your line in the water yet.

All you need to create a new stream of income is to make something consumable and offer it at a price that someone will pay.

If you're not making offers, you're not making money.

Get your line in the water! — Richie Norton

What attracted me to it, beyond it being really intelligent, was that it was sadly something that would be unique on television. Anchoring this political show is this vital, dynamic, complex, thriving marriage. These people are passionately and fiercely committed to making it work out. — Tim Daly

Just getting something to work usually means writing reams of code fast, like a Stephen King novel, but making it maintainable and high-quality code that really expresses the ideas well, is like writing poetry. Art is taking away. — Erik Naggum

When you are making a success of something, it's not work. It's a way of life. You enjoy yourself because you are making your contribution to the world. — Andy Granatelli

Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things "work," but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either. — Richard Rohr

But even though I know my flaws are many (many many many), and there are always ways I could be better, and I should never stop working for that - I also need to give myself a break. I can cut myself some slack sometimes. Because I'm a work in progress. Because nobody is perfect. At least I acknowledge the mistakes I've made, and am making. At least I'm trying. That means something, doesn't it?
And just because I have room for improvement doesn't mean I'm worthless, or that I have nothing to offer to, like, the world. — Hannah Harrington

I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something. — Michael Haneke

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section — John Calvin

When it comes down to making work that really sings, I don't know if I can teach any of it. I don't even know if I can do any of it half the time. It's so much about failure, it's so much about making pictures that are so utterly boring and overstated, you're endlessly disappointed. And in that process you hopefully find something that draws you back and calls to you. — Larry Sultan

If use is not an appropriate criterion for decision making in the academic life, what is? Love ... The virtues of love as a criterion for choosing a college major ... it is not pretentious. "Use" is pretentious because it claims to know something about the future that it doesn't really know. Love is immediate ... [love] guarantees that you will work to your highest potential ... it is part of who you are, and not just something you think, often wrongly, that you can use. — Leroy S Rouner

What makes it worth it though, is I love drawing. I LOVE IT. I love making comics. I love starting a new page and buying new paper, ink and brushes. I love telling stories! I love the people I work with, I love the people I meet. I love thinking about the syntax and language of comics. I love esoteric discussions about the comic book industry. I love the opportunities I've had in life because of comics. The second I stop loving it I will find something else to do.
Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don't offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into it's eyes and know it's true, that you love comics back. — Becky Cloonan

Really good work probably comes out of a willingness to disclose yourself, open yourself up in spiritual and emotional ways that risk making you look banal or melodramatic or naive or unhip or sappy, and to ask the reader really to feel something. To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this. And the effort actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don't seem to have yet. — David Foster Wallace

When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional - a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful. — Bill Viola

I have said as much as that the aim of art was to destroy the curse of labour by making work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of producing something worth its exercise. — William Morris

As an academic I feel I should intellectualize and theoretically analyze when all I really want to do is let the work take me somewhere, manipulate me, and then rough me up a bit. When it comes right down to it, I only want to spend time with work that makes me think and teaches me something while making my body react. — Barbara Degenevieve

You can be obsessed with makeup and hair products and, you know, your appearance and still be absolutely making smart life decisions and work on your smarts, develop your smarts by studying something like math. Then you'll make much better decisions on the brands of clothing that you buy or whatever it is that you want. — Danica McKellar

As we've discovered, we're wired for story and in the absence of data we will rely on confabulations and conspiracies. When our children sense something is wrong - maybe a sick grandparent or a financial worry - or when they know something is wrong - an argument or a work crisis - they quickly jump to filling in the missing pieces of the story. And because our well-being is directly tied to their sense of safety, fear sets in and often dictates the story. It's important that we give them as much information as is appropriate for their developmental and emotional capacity, and that we provide a safe place for them to ask questions. Emotions are contagious and when we're stressed or anxious or afraid our children can be quickly engulfed in the same emotions. More information means less fear-based story-making. — Brene Brown

The best meetings get real work done. When your people learn that your meetings actually accomplish something, they will stop making excuses to be elsewhere. — Larry Constantine

In general, I don't like to blame the creators. They are making work that appeals to them and the people in the room with them. They are making something that is, at some level, genuine. But the distributors, the networks that bring art to the population, they are the ones who ensure that there's a flattening and narrowing. The younger me may have sat up all night with bandmates raging against Puffy or DMX or whoever, but the fact is that they were never the problem. The problem was that someone in the corporate chain of command felt that there was a need to play those songs fourteen times a day and to eliminate alternatives. — Ahmir Questlove Thompson

Leaning against my car after changing the oil,
I hold my black hands out and stare into them
as if they were the faces of my children looking
at the winter moon and thinking of the snow
that will erase everything before they wake.
In the garage, my wife comes behind me
and slides her hands beneath my soiled shirt.
Pressing her face between my shoulder blades,
she mumbles something, and soon we are laughing,
wrestling like children among piles of old rags,
towels that unravel endlessly, torn sheets,
work shirts from twenty years ago when I stood
in the door of a machine shop, grease blackened,
and Kansas lay before me blazing with new snow,
a future of flat land, white skies, and sunlight.
After making love, we lie on the abandoned
mattress and stare at our pale winter bodies
sprawling in the half-light. She touches her belly,
the scar of our last child, and the black prints
of my hand along her hips and thighs. — B.H. Fairchild

The first bill that President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I think it says something about his priorities that the first bill he put his name on has my name on it too. As he said that day with me by his side, 'Making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone.' — Lilly Ledbetter

I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good. — Howard Shore

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's. — John Mayer

The particular threat to
the intellectual today, whether in the West or the nonWestern
world, is not the academy, nor the suburbs, nor the appalling commercialism of journalism and publishing
houses, but rather an attitude that I will call professionalism.
By professionalism I mean thinking of your work
as an intellectual as something you do for a living, between
the hours of nine and five with one eye on the clock, and
another cocked at what is considered to be proper, professional
behavior-not rocking the boat, not straying outside
the accepted paradigms or limits, making yourself marketable
and above all presentable, hence uncontroversial
and unpolitical and "objective. — Edward Said

Punishment? You don't have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don't think it doesn't go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body."
"That's where you fucked up, little girl. I don't want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I'll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You're the one who's being selfish now."
"How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don't understand what you want."
"First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You're the one making this tawdry by pretending it's dirty and not worthy of the light of day."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"We're going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn't work, so I'm taking control. I should have done it in the first place. — Lexi Blake

Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal. — Ed Catmull

Performance wasnt something that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives ... that people might relate to in terms of process, everyday activities- bathing, eating, etc. — Janine Antoni

Making a painting is like having sex for a month or something. Then I go through this period of elation at finishing the work. Then you drop off - you know, 'post-coital man is sad,' as the old saying goes. — Tim Zuck

I work in my study, taking the collections of words that people send me and making small adjustments to them, changing something here and there, checking everything is in order and putting a part of myself into the text by introducing just a little bit of difference. ("Substitutions") — Michael Marshall Smith

I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well. — David Bowie

Sure, the Lightcap makes you a little docile, more open to guidance. Who says that's a bad thing? Look at those people out there. They don't want choice, they want convenience. To be a part of something, to feel as if they have some kind of say. The poor bastards out there who work four jobs--you think they care about the shit going on up here? It's not even on their radar. They're too busy making sure they don't lose their jobs, because then they'd lose their house, and then they'd disappear. Gotta keep up appearances to live in a Corp Region! — Dan Marshall

Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work? — Tom Hodgkinson

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects. — Gregory Crewdson

A lot of people mock fandom and fan fiction, like it's lazy to base your own creativity and passion on someone else's work. But some of us need a stepping-stone to start. What's wrong with finding joy in making something, regardless of the inspiration? — Felicia Day

Reaking up the space and using the space, using the length of the space, the height of it, whatever, the light, all of those things. It's something that you have to kind of slowly recognize in your work and develop over years of making work. — Robert Barry

Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly". — Jostein Gaarder