Robert Allen

“Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. All or nothing thinking is a nonstarter. However, doubting the quality of your work might, at times, help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Shams also introduced Rumi to the practice of sama, or deep listening. Conventionally understood, sama referred to the practice of listening to a book read aloud with the goal not only of acquiring knowledge but also of strengthening concentration. The successful student would receive a certificate called the ijazateh sama. Shams understood sama in a radically different sense. For him the object of attention was not scholarly texts but music and poetry, which he saw as a means of arriving at mystical trance, revelation, ecstasy, and divine intoxication.”
― Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi, Gold

“In truth, a good chunk of activity in derivative markets is driven by speculation. Part of it is obscured by semantics; the boundary between speculation and investment is always hazy. If you lost money you speculated. If you made money you were investing. Or was it the other way around?”
― Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives

“It’s helpful to remember that when you throw away an old playbook, you still get to keep the skills you learned along the way. These hard-earned abilities transcend rules. They’re yours to keep. Imagine what can arise when you overlay an entirely new set of materials and instructions over your accumulated expertise.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being