“Be thankful for the hurt.
Find meaning in the hurt.
And,
understand every moment that it hurts
represents another moment
you’re alive
and breathing
and living
and loving
and experiencing
all the beauty
this world has to offer.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 48)
“While competition certainly makes sense in the world of sports—where at the end of each game somebody wins and somebody loses—there’s no place for competition in the arts. One way to determine whether or not art is ‘successful’ is if it’s original. Ironically, it’s impossible to be original in the arts if you’re competing with another artist, because to compete is to agree you are playing the same game. And so in art, to compete is to lose.”
Cole Schafer
“Sometimes, I wonder if we hurt others because we feel lonely in our own pain.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 45)
“I couldn’t tell you what I fear
more. Spending the rest of my life
with just one person. Or, never
finding one person I want to spend
the rest of my life with.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 43)
“How to talk to people.
1. Listen.
2. Look them in the eyes (I struggle here).
3. Set your phone on silent & leave it face down on the table.
4. Don’t make small talk (everyone knows it’s cold).
5. Listen.
6. Don’t agree just for the sake of agreeing.
7. Don’t disagree just for the sake of disagreeing.
8. Listen.
9. Say something interesting.
10. Leave them better than you found them.
11. Listen.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 39)
“When you hate someone,
be certain you’re hating them,
not the fabricated version of them
you’ve created in your head.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 29)
“When we remember that the people we stumble
into on a day-to-day basis are all
just works-in-progress, it gives us permission to have
greater patience, compassion and love towards
them. Not unlike ourselves, they’re trying to pilot
the plane while they build it. They’re learning as they
go. Failing more often than succeeding.
And, at times, finding themselves desperately
close to giving up. If we have one single
responsibility as humans, it’s to love (or at the
very least respect) one another through this
work-in-progress. It’s being empathetic
to the fact that nobody is exactly who they want to be,
nor where they want to be, but they’re working
like hell to get there.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 21)
“Most of what we see today in this virtual world we play in is not self-love but self-obsession. Men and women throw a mask on it and call it self-love, but it’s not. When you love yourself, that light shines through, it beams out of you penetrating into the hearts and minds of others, inspiring them to love themselves too. When you’re obsessed with yourself, you produce no light, only darkness. Self-obsessed people want the world darker so they can burn brighter. To put it in less abstract terms, when someone stumbles into you (be it in the physical or virtual world) will they leave feeling fuller, stronger, lovelier? Or, will they leave feeling less? That is the fundamental difference between self-love and self-obsession. Those who love themselves show others how to love themselves too.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 5)
One Minute, Please? [Book]
Book Overview: A book of poetry by Cole Schafer aka January Black. Written on the back of the book: “To be candid, I’m not entirely sure what the fuck any of this is about. But, if you have a minute… I do think I can make you feel something.”
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
26 Cole Schafer Quotes from One Minute, Please? on Love in a World of Conditions, Screens, and Pain
“My aunt and uncle in their country home taught me how to be okay with sitting still, a quality that has been as important to my career as anything. To be a decent writer, you have to be okay with either writing or doing absolutely nothing. I’m a firm believer that the only way to be creative is to sit around and do nothing until you get bored enough to entertain yourself.”
Cole Schafer
“All of us can live a much easier existence if we stopped expecting greatness and started expecting something less. At least when you expect failure in everything that you do, you start living your life doing the shit you actually want to do versus doing the shit you think will help you achieve some unpromised outcome.”
Cole Schafer
“Make the world question whether or not there isn’t one of you but ten of you. Create. Create. Create. Create some more. If you’re young, when you’re young, sacrifice everything. Sacrifice love if you have to (because if it’s love it won’t get away). Sacrifice sleep. Sacrifice peace of mind. Sacrifice sorry looks from family members at the dinner table. Sacrifice your pride. Make ends meet through whatever means possible by day and once the light turns to darkness, follow your muse like a hound on the scent of some bloody, dying thing.”
Cole Schafer
“When I started writing this piece, I didn’t know where exactly I was going to land. I never know where I’m going to land when I start writing something. In fact, I’m deeply skeptical of any writer that claims they have the precognition to know where they’re going to end up before they’ve even started.”
Cole Schafer