The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

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

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it's for failure.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.

Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you, ” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.

If there ever comes a time that you forget where you came from, you've gone too far.

I can't imagine that I would have been cast in the role, without Jamie Lee giving me a thumbs up.

It's much harder to play beloved than to play a rotten guy. Rotten guy is a piece of cake. So playing a beloved person really sets a high bar for your behavior and your acting and what you project.

Palming separates the men from the boys!

A civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organized for violence.

Reason argues the case, but fact may determine the judgment.

To talk to someone who does not listen is enough to tense the devil.

Make a little space, and get out of your own way.

Evil deeds are the fruit of an evil heart. They are not an aberration from our true self but a revelation of it.

There's a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can't write. It's a big business.