Quotes About Commitment

You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures. You

Love like that is a deep well, with steep sides. Once you fall in, that's it—you will love that person always

I encourage makers to recognize that when you pull your ego out of the game, your work can become a series of joyful collaborations (between artist and mystery, between artist and peers, between artist and audience). The important thing is to take responsibility for continuing to show up for your side of the bargain.

A sage Portuguese sailor who had told him, years before 'To be prosperous and happy in life, Henry, it is simple. Pick one woman, pick it well, and surrender.

Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.

Devotion is diligence without assurance.

repeatedly give up their own health or their own time or their own best interests on behalf of what they perceive as the greater good—perhaps in order to consistently reinforce an imperative sense of specialness, of chosenness, of connection.

If you do say yes to an idea, now it's showtime.

Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done.

As someone who struggles with anxiety and cowardice, as we all do, I'm profoundly inspired by. . . . full-on commitment to wonder, to wonder as a response to anguish or difficulty. It makes everything a puzzle, right? A catastrophe is nothing but a puzzle with the volume of drama turned up very high.

And this commitment of ours—consciously devoid of official commitment—felt miraculous in its liberation.

Even if my acquaintance at the publishing party was certain that she herself would never abandon her husband, the question was not entirely up to her. She was not the only person in that bed. All lovers, even the most faithful lovers, are vulnerable to abandonment against their will.

The sooner and more passionately you get married to this idea—that it is ultimately entirely up to you—the better off you'll be.

Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason—for insurance against later regret.

Lapse saamine on umbes nagu oma näo tätoveerimine. Sa pead ikka raudselt kindel olema, et see on just see, mida sa tahad.

Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine.

But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time -- everything.

So the question is not so much What are you passionate about? The question is What are you passionate enough about that you can endure even the most disagreeable aspects of the work.

Most individuals have never had enough time, and they've never had enough resources, and they've never had enough support or patronage or reward . . . and yet still they persist in creating. They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary.

But other times you might need to say no to an idea because it is truly not the right moment, or because you're already engaged in a different project, or because you're certain that this particular idea has accidentally knocked on the wrong door.

What would you do even if you knew that you might very well fail? What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant? What do you love even more than you love your own ego? How fierce is your trust in that love?

How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it?

Why do people persist in creating, even when it's difficult and inconvenient and often financially unrewarding? They persist because they are in love. They persist because they are hot for their vocation.

Even if you have only fifteen minutes a day in a stairwell alone with your creativity, take it. Go hide in that stairwell and make out with your art! (You can get a lot of making out done in fifteen minutes, as any furtive teenager can tell you.)