The professional is prepared at a deeper level. He is prepared, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage.

The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now."   —W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.

The opposite of fear is love—love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.

You become an artist once you start saying that you are an artist.

We're facing dragons too. Fire-breathing griffins of the soul, whom we must outfight and outwit to reach the treasure of our self-in-potential and to release the maiden who is God's plan and destiny for ourselves and the answer to why we were put on this planet.

Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.

Genius is a Latin word; the Romans used it to denote an inner spirit, holy and inviolable, which watches over us, guiding us to our calling. A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. It is our soul's seat, the vessel that holds our being-in-potential, our star's beacon and Polaris.

She has proven she has guts. Does it matter that, alone at a traffic light, our passionate dreamer finds herself breaking down in tears? Does it make a difference that she's terrified of the choice she has made, that she has to fight off nightly the overwhelming urge to pack up and go home? All that matters is that she has taken action. She is here. She has left there behind. This does not go unnoticed, by mortals or by the gods.

The professional blows critics off. He doesn't even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. They can articulate in their reviews the same toxic venom that Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.