“But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”

In Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, the profoundly human (i.e., imperfect) teacher, Hector, reminds his students that “The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, may... See more

Why creative labour isn’t always seen as “real work” – and what that means for artists and designers

I don’t know very much [when I start.] I write my way into my knowledge. Then, if I’m lucky, I get a break. That’s why it’s so important to get started. Because however awful starting is—and it is absolutely awful—when you get into it, when you’ve got ten pages, which may take two weeks, then you can build.

For long have I wandered,

in search of a place I can call my own

For a peace unknown,

Where one day I could

Rest my bones and be still

I aspire to Isak Dinesen’s way: work a little every day, without hope and without despair. What a way to live! To make! To be!

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

Learn to interrogate yourself. This is not the same as doubting your abilities. Never doubt that you are capable of just about anything, whether from willful action or under stress. But question what you think, why, follow alternative lines of thought. For yourself & for society

I am not sure that I exist, actually.

I am the writers that I have read; the people that I have I have met; the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

— Jorge Luis Borges, 1981