Quotes

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I remember watching Listening to shame | Brené Brown and feeling a sentence literally burn itself into my mind. "And I know it's seductive to stand outside the arena". This quote is from that moment.

Wherever You Stand, Be The Soul Of That Place

During college when Atima was a new friend I came across a picture in her Facebook collection. It was this quote. I shelved it as one more in a collection I had no connection with. When I started my MSc, this quote came back to me during the first few weeks after I had been seeing the general lethargy of life in my new place of learning. Before that it had not really occured to me that I had the power to choose and had been excercising it till date by choosing not to choose.

What have we but words to offer, for pain in the loss of a mother.

Everyone will lose their parent some day. Words are the only thing I can offer. Only words.