"Effective leaders sacrifice much that is good in order to dedicate themselves to what is best"

“I was offered seven deals from seven different major labels between 2009-2011, and to be quite honest... nowadays, you need a hit record, a great radio team, an amazing PR firm, social media, a big budget, a team that is ready to work extremely hard, and the drive and passion to win!”

“Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

“The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis.”

“People like to make fun of the fans who camp out but people have renaissance fairs; people do Civil War re-enactments; people do what they like. I'm tired of hearing people rage on the fans. If you don't like 'Twilight,' don't buy a ticket.”

“In the late 1980s, Soviets were allowed to keep the wealth they created by raising vegetables on their garden plots. Although these plots composed only about 2% of the agricultural lands in the Soviet Union, they produced 25% of the food! When Soviets kept the wealth they created, they produced almost 16 times more than when it was taken from them at gunpoint, if necessary!”

“There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.”

Source : Jonathan Ames (2007). “I Love You More Than You Know: Essays”, p.48, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

“I always live in the present. I never dream about what might happen. Why? It might not.”

“But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim.”

Source : William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.80