Quotes About Mastery

It's hard to describe the profound way James Harden changes the game of basketball when he's on the court. It's not easy to capture the way he can see two or three steps ahead of everyone else. James is unlike any player I've ever played with.

I had to be reminded that the guitar is infinite. It never stops teaching you, it never stops being difficult; there's an unlimited amount of things to learn, and you'll never master it.

Balenciaga taught me everything I know. He taught me to care for the details, that it was not necessary to sew on a button where it had no use or to add a flower to make a dress beautiful... no unnecessary detail.

Effective listening is something that can absolutely be learned and mastered. Even if you find attentive listening difficult and, in certain situations, boring or unpleasant, that doesn't mean you can't do it. You just have to know what to work on.

If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you'll develop skills that other professionals don't have.

Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were the two guys with unstoppable moves.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.

Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.

You need to put what you learn into practice and do it over and over again until it's a habit. I always say, 'Seeing is not believing. Doing is believing.' There is a lot to learn about fitness, nutrition and emotions, but once you do, you can master them instead of them mastering you.

We now live in the era of the super-specialist - of clinicians who have taken the time to practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone who hasn't.

Make your work deeper and better than those before you, and eventually someone will notice. If you don't think the work is better than what you've seen, then go back until it is.

From the start, I held the pick in an unusual way. I used to bend my thumb way back in order to get a good angle for fast playing. I played that way for 10 years.

I wouldn't recommend sports betting as a career. It requires a ton of effort and mastery of many different skills, and successful bettors are unwilling to teach you because you would be their competition.

Running my hands really fast up and down the fretboard... I mean, anybody can do that. It's the Guitar Olympics, and I can't think of anything more pointless.

Finding your bliss can make survival seem like a joyous journey. And a strange thing happens along the way when you love what you are doing: you become good at it.

Discipline helps you finish a job, and finishing is what separates excellent work from average work.

Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.

There is no shortcut to perfection. All it takes is hard work, and more hard work.

Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.

Talent isn't as important as the work and dedication necessary to become competent.

The worse you're performing, the more you must work mentally and emotionally. The greatest and toughest art in golf is "playing badly well." All the true greats have been masters at it.

To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

All work and no play doesn't just make Jill and Jack dull, it kills the potential of discovery, mastery, and openness to change and flexibility and it hinders innovation and invention.