Why is it always so hard to get started?

exactly what I wanted my life to be. Play.

To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.

Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.

Expect nothing, seek nothing, grasp nothing—the immortal Japanese poets wrote lines that seemed polished and polished until they gleamed like the blade of a samurai’s sword, or the stones of a mountain brook. Spotless.

Patton. I hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit. I hated the sword, but loved the samurai.

Love truth, but pardon error.

Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

One task, we often said, clears the mind.

I’d tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years.

I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it.