Brady Mason

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.”
― Haim G. Ginott

“I carry a persistent fear that my thoughts are incorrect, or silly, or so obvious they aren’t worth saying. Suddenly I’m a little boy, sitting in class like a solemn ghost. Mrs. Larson asks me a question, all the seven-year-old eyes in the room turn to me with expectation, and I’m frozen in place, terrified by the sudden realization that I’m expected to contribute. My cheeks flush and I want to go away to someplace safe—someplace like the woods or the eternal fields of green Illinois corn where I can watch and experience and listen without any demand to justify my existence. I’ve always been happy to be alone. God, however, never takes his eyes off me, and on my good days I believe that he is smiling, never demanding an answer other than the fact of myself. I exist as his redeemed creation, and that is, pleasantly, enough for him.”
― Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy