Quotes About Mastery

Today I am devoted to addressing all the little things about me and in my life that I have not mastered!

Art is progressive; the more you do it, the better you get. I defy anyone to write fifteen short stories and not have story #15 be at least marginally better than story #1. It's simply not possible. Setting a date-certain for surrender often results in giving up just as you're starting to get good at your craft.

Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange. It is only by alienating the desired that language masters it. The frenzy of desire in the medium of words yields the mania of the catalogue. I struggle with the proverbs of hell.

As for your Spanish, don't worry, persist. One day it will cease to feel like a language, it will become the way things are.

Every clarinet has its own particular bag of tricks, which must be exploited and explored.

The more you study, the more you subsequently know; naturally, the more you know, the nearer you get to perfection as a journalist.

They were firemakers! They were gods! [humans]

Culture and collars had gone together, to him, and he had been deceived into believing that college educations and mastery were the same things.

Who Has Won to Mastership

They're like, 'Oh, you did a...' and I'm like, 'I did a what?' No, I flipped twice. I twisted twice. They go, 'It's called a...' and I'm like, 'Why do I need to know that? I just need to go and do that.'

Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it.

The more aware of your intentions and your experiences you become, the more you will be able to connect the two, and the more you will be able to create the experiences of your life consciously. This is the development of mastery. It is the creation of authentic power.

When you play the same character for a long time, you have a shorthand. You get onto the set, you put on your outfit and two-thirds of your work is done because you've built on that work for so many years.

I always back myself as a finisher, but I always practise it as well. Every type of finish: left foot, right foot, headers, penalties, free kicks.

Stained glass is unique from the outside, but as a painting insider, I know that oil painting's all about light. And it's about the depiction of light, the way that it bounces off different types of skin, different landscapes. The mastery of that light is the obsession of most of my painter friends.

I think if you're good at art, you'll be good at most types of art.

Some of those 10, nine-year vets, they know some things that your typical college senior wouldn't. I've come across some guards in the NFL that know how to use their hands better than D-linemen in college. I guess they've learned from their enemies.

The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.

On the traditional computer keyboard, I'm a super-fast touch typist. I mastered touch typing in high school.

The ultimate judge of your swing is the flight of the ball.

I think the ultimate compliment that someone can give you is that you're a technician.

I think my playing has been orchestral throughout the years, and this is another way of expressing that. But I primarily see it as the ultimate accomplishment of a musician. Composing makes me feel like I've finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician.

Success depends almost entirely on how effectively you learn to manage the game's two ultimate adversaries: the course and yourself.

For me, Picasso was the ultimate man. He taught me that photography is all about how you approach an image: what you do and what you don't do. He inspired me to go beyond what you think is in front of you.