Kyle > Kyle's Quotes

“To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“So much of writing is about sitting down and doing it every day, and so much of it is about getting into the custom of taking in everything that comes along, seeing it all as grist for the mill. This can be a very comforting habit, like biting your nails. Instead of being scared all the time, you detach, watch what goes on, and consider it creatively. Instead of feeling panicked by those lowlifes on the subway, you notice all the details of their clothes and bearing and speech. Maybe you never quite get to the point where you think, “Ah—so that’s what a gun looks like from this end.” But you take in all you can, as a child would, without the atmospheric smog of most grown-up vision.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did—traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there. You may end up sleeping on an old wicker couch with a dog licking your face while an Ab Rocket infomercial plays in the background. It’s a modern-day manger.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“There are practices that can assist in accessing this deeper well inside yourself. For example, you can try an anger-releasing exercise where you beat on a pillow for five minutes. It’s more difficult than you might think to do this for the full duration. Time yourself and go hard. Then immediately fill five pages with whatever comes out.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“When we miss it, it really does pass us by. Tomorrow presents another opportunity for awareness, but it’s never an opportunity for the same awareness.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The creative energy exists in the journey to the making, not in the act of constructing.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The great artists throughout history are the ones able to maintain this childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally. Just as an infant is selfish, they’re protective of their art in a way that’s not always cooperative. Their needs as a creator come first. Often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. For one of the most loved singer-songwriters of all time, if inspiration comes through, it takes precedence over other obligations. His friends and family understand that in the middle of a meal, conversation, or event, if a song calls, he’ll exit the scene and tend to it, without explanation.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Put the decision making into the work, not into when to work. The more you reduce your daily life-maintenance tasks, the greater the bandwidth available for creative decisions.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Most who choose the artist’s path don’t have a choice. We feel compelled to engage, as if by some primal instinct, the same force that calls turtles toward the sea after hatching in the sand.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“However you frame yourself as an artist, the frame is too small.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“I may well be an eleven-fingered oaf slobbering over a typewriter, pounding out a thorny jumble of trash, an uneducated animal who runs on instinct and feeling. But this is my voice.”
― Flea, Acid for the Children: A Memoir

“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest,” said Thoreau,”
― Flea, Acid for the Children: A Memoir

“the song “Defunkt” by the band Defunkt,”
― Flea, Acid for the Children: A Memoir

“There is this idea in the general population that all comedians are sad clowns with traumatic childhoods. Based on my experience, that’s not exactly correct. What is, for the most part, true is that all comedians have a compulsion to perform comedy. This is notable because, especially starting out, performing comedy—be it improv, sketch, or especially stand-up—is stupid hard. Multiple times a night, every night of the week, you have to do it poorly in front of people. And you have to do this for years before you bomb* only some of the time. If you want to go through this long, exhausting, disenchanting journey, then comedy must fill a deep need for you. For every comedian the source of that need is different, be it nature or nurture, but there is a reason almost everyone who eventually makes it describes that first laugh as feeling like a high they were chasing.”
― Jesse David Fox, Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work

“turn-of-the-twentieth-century rich dicks sought to elevate certain cultural products out of the grasp of the common man.”
― Jesse David Fox, Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work