When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that’s what you’re going to do. The idea is to get to a truth that is apart from the person who created it, something that anyone can look at and find something that resonates as being true – not true in the factual sense, but true in the more universal sense, a truth that you can see.
Conor Oberst

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass

To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.
Abraham Maslow

Possession (1981) dir. by Andrzej Żuławski

The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.
The Couple Overfloweth, Mediators, Negotiations 1972-1990, Gilles Deleuze; p 129

u see a kid get beat in the store and u just acting like yount see shit and lil homie trine tag u in and u just like shit boy its a cole worl out here

You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and God damn it, you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go about the business of living. That’s how I’ve done it. There’s no other way.
Elizabeth Taylor

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.