Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values. And that's what I'm trying to do.
I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion.
The best kind of accountability on a team is peer-to-peer. Peer pressure is more efficient and effective than going to the leader, anonymously complaining, and having them stop what they are doing to intervene.
We will be judged. There will be an accounting; there will be a reckoning sooner or later. It will either come from ourselves and our own conscience, or it will come from our kids when they ask that inconvenient question: 'What were you doing when they turned those kids back from the border?'
In January we start saving money, getting out of credit card debt, funding our retirement accounts, and we're doing wonderful. Then, every single year like clockwork, starting in November, all of you fall into this trap that says, 'I have to buy this gift... I can't show up at this party and not have something for everybody.'
Whites would accuse you of causing trouble when all you were doing was acting like a normal human being instead of cringing.
Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.
Don't grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
I have no regrets about doing 'Strictly.' This is the biggest achievement of my life.
If you talk to most ambitious people, people who are high achievers, they're rarely at peace with what they're doing because they need an engine to keep moving.
It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.
Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.
I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs... I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet.
I like hearing fiddles, steel guitar, acoustics up loud - really rock & roll stuff but with a country sound behind it. That's just who I am. I'm not trying to prove a point; I am just doing what I like. But I don't have any problems with any other artist coming in and doing their own thing.
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.
I want to give as many Canadians the opportunity to be successful and if we can use their athletic gifts to get them a free degree or a free diploma across the border then I guess I'm doing my job.
Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it's dangerous.
