A Perfect Union of Contrary Things

by Maynard James Keenan

Behind every extraordinary person is a crisis overcome.

created swirling designs with his Spirograph, one after the other, and no two alike.

As an only child, I kind of lived in my head anyway, so I brought my friends with me, having many voices in my head. The glass-half-empty view of this is isolation. But the glass-half-full version is independence.

There’s just shit that happens, and if we all help each other, we can work through it.

the magic of stories lay in making them his own,

Maybe—just maybe—there was only one story, an endless story with infinite variations, but one story all the same, populated with characters in a boundless array of costume and mask whose job it was to recognize and celebrate the mysterious tale they carried deep inside.

While his Sugar Ridge friends tackled Algebra I, he was relegated to the remedial course and spent the entire year studying concepts they covered in two weeks.

He got you to pay attention, but just because you can answer the question doesn’t mean you know the why.

Writing was almost second nature to him now, and the idea that it was permissible to alter someone else’s story was a revelation. Instead of passively accepting an outcome, he discovered it was within his power—was, in fact, his duty—to create it. The assignment changed more than the book’s ending. Reworking William Golding’s ideas forced Jim to place himself at the heart of the story, to understand character and plot more deeply and recognize his own importance in the creative process. The exercise was the catalyst to view his own art in a new way, to admit that it was no longer a solitary pastime to fill his empty hours. It was, in fact, his strength.

well, you get a little praise for something, you follow up on it.