To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction.
The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i. e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.
. . . writing is not a performance but a generosity.
When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.
A lot of nerds aren't aware they're nerds. A geek has thrown his hands up to the universe and gone, 'I speak Klingon - who am I fooling? You win! I'm just gonna openly like what I like. ' Geeks tend to be a little happier with themselves.
You learn real early to make a film and then duck, and basically that's how I go about it.
I've only got a Saturday job so my weekdays are generally pretty free.