Born on June 16 — Quotes

Big Idea
Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny — shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There’s no such thing as an unimportant day.

"By the way, we also hate it when people . . . call Artemis "the city in space." We're not in space; we're on the moon. I'm mean, technically, we're in space, but so is London."

I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: “SO WHAT?” She threw the piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.” It’s a lesson I never forgot.

When you don’t have much time, a routine helps you make the little time you have count. When you have all the time in the world, a routine helps you make sure you don’t waste it.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” — William Ralph Inge

In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. — EPICTETUS

Como dice la artista Maira Kalman: “Evitar el trabajo es la mejor forma de concentrarme.

Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

I love both readings — you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.

When I’m working on my art, I don’t feel like Odysseus. I feel more like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill. When I’m working, I don’t feel like Luke Skywalker. I feel more like Phil Connors in the movie Groundhog Day.

...I still remember those girls and who didn't love math, uh, the way I did. And I mean, oh my gosh, think what they were missing. I know I always felt, you know, solving math problems was a little bit like eating candy. There was something about it. It was so rewarding. It was just such a pleasure to do it. And I thought, oh, once they see this, they're going to enjoy it too.

good work isn’t created in a vacuum,

I repeat, ‘I am strong, able and calm.

So the novel is a race, and I can see the finish line from the first sentence: it’s an intuition that magnetizes the entire text. The closer I get to the goal, the faster I want to go. There’s even a sense of urgency, of hurrying, as though I was out of breath and had to, at all costs, finish before I ran out of strength. So I find that my endings are often too quick, not unfolded enough, not majestic enough…

Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.” — Christoph Niemann