Sign in with Facebook
“to require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do — away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes. Believing that artwork should be perfect, you gradually become convinced that you cannot make such work. (You are correct.) Sooner or later, since you cannot do what you are trying to do, you quit. And in one of those perverse little ironies of life, only the pattern itself achieves perfection — a perfect death spiral: you misdirect your work; you stall; you quit.”
― Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
― Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
“The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.”
― The Screwtape Letters
― The Screwtape Letters
“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
“In this method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do? In this scheme of things we don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.”
― The Road to Character
― The Road to Character
“In this scheme of things we don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life. The important answers are not found inside, they are found outside. This perspective begins not within the autonomous self, but with the concrete circumstances in which you happen to be embedded. This perspective begins with an awareness that the world existed long before you and will last long after you, and that in the brief span of your life you have been thrown by fate, by history, by chance, by evolution, or by God into a specific place with specific problems and needs. Your job is to figure certain things out: What does this environment need in order to be made whole? What is it that needs repair? What tasks are lying around waiting to be performed? As the novelist Frederick Buechner put it, “At what points do my talents and deep gladness meet the world’s deep need?”
― The Road to Character
― The Road to Character
Jake’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jake’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
462 books
|
56 friends
262 books
|
78 friends
19,952 books
|
132 friends
282 books
|
81 friends
968 books
|
197 friends
983 books
|
107 friends
189 books
|
47 friends
323 books
|
119 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Jake
Lists liked by Jake
