I constantly get out of my comfort zone. Looking cool is the easiest way to mediocrity. The coolest guy in my high school ended up working at a car wash. Once you push yourself into something new, and whole new world of opportunities opens up. But you might get hurt. In fact you will get hurt. But amazingly when you heal – you are somewhere you’ve never been.
Success isn’t owned. It’s leased. And rent is due every day.
However, I continue to try and I continue, indefatigably, to reach out. There’s no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference – but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort.
I hate that word – “lucky.” It cheapens a lot of hard work. Living in Brooklyn in an apartment without any heat and paying for dinner at the bodega with dimes – I don’t think I felt myself lucky back then. Doing plays for 50 bucks and trying to be true to myself as an artist and turning down commercials where they wanted a leprechaun. Saying I was lucky negates the hard work I put in and spits on that guy who’s freezing his ass off back in Brooklyn. So I won’t say I’m lucky. I’m fortunate enough to find or attract very talented people. For some reason I found them, and they found me.
Better to be the one who smiled than the one who didn't smile back.
Throw me to the wolves and I will return leading the pack.
Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.
I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that’s when I start counting, because that’s when it really counts.
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Nothing can stop the person with the right mental attitude from achieving their goal; nothing on earth can help the person with the wrong mental attitude.
I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.
A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.
The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.
I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.
If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small.
An entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.
You don’t set out to build a wall. You don't say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.
The habits that took years to build, do not take a day to change.
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.