“Be wary of liking or disregarding someone’s song simply because of who they are. Don’t allow prejudgments to close your mind. Keep your ears open and listen. Even liars can speak the truth, even friends can lead us astray. Hear the song, not the singer.”
Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen Guitar (Page 120)
“Do not be afraid to bring out the more sensitive or ambitious sides to your character. These repressed parts of you are yearning to be let out. In the theater of life, expand the roles that you play. Don’t worry about people’s reactions to any changes in you they sense. You are not so easy to categorize, which will fascinate them and give you the power to play with their perceptions of you, altering them at will.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 372)
“To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 6)
“You’ve got stuff in your head that no one else has got. And you’ve got stuff in your head that you think you bear alone, but I PROMISE you share with so many. Only way to know the difference is to spill it out. On paper, into a mic, to a shrink, onto a canvas.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gmorning, Gnight
“Every one of us has constructed an ego-based identity in which we have assigned ourselves an acceptable role that eventually smothers our full self-expression. Rather than being who we really are, we become a characterization of the person we think we ‘should’ be.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 100)
“If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone. It is enough that I must die alone. I am determined to let down, whatever the risks, if it means that I may have whatever is there for me.”
Sheldon Kopp, If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“The magic in any art is not only in its technique but in its authenticity. Truth in its rawest form is what resonates most powerfully.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 39)