Deep Work Quotes

David would enter the crucible of suffering where truly great servants of God are made. Perhaps you are there now. One of the most devastating realities of this kind of suffering is that often the one you thought would be your protector becomes the one who measures out the pain. All that longing for justice, for fairness, for having everything as it should be seems useless. As you think on the glory days of the past, your heart aches to turn back the clock, but you can't. In these moments it's tempting to believe that God has forgotten about us, or even worse, that He simply doesn't care - His favor has moved on. If you are there right now, my heart aches for you. No one signs up for this school of suffering, and yet the deep work that God does in this painful, lonely place is rarely produced anywhere else. ~ Sheila Walsh

That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. ~ David Foster Wallace

Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw into our awareness and into language itself the unobvious and the unexpected. ~ Jane Hirshfield

Deep play precedes deep work. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature; not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

By attempting to "write bad" for twenty minutes, they'd somehow managed to produce remarkable work.
From AWP - The Writer's Notebook ~ Steve Almond

Nick... I hope one day you find you a woman who loves you like my Melissa loved me. Whatever you do, boy, don't turn your back on her. If she says she needs you for something, don't matter how stupid it sounds or what deadline you got, you go to her and you do it. Screw work or whatever else. In the end, the only things that matter are the people in your life. The ones who make your life worth living and whose smiles light up your world. Don't ever push them aside for fair-weather friends. Everything else is just cheap window dressing that you can replace. But once them people are gone..." He winced. "You can't buy back time, Nick. Ever. It's the only thing in life you can't get more of, and it's the one thing that will mercilessly tear you up when it's gone. It takes pity on no soul and no heart. And all those fools who tell you it gets easier in time are lying dumb-asses.
Losing someone you really love don't never get easier. You just go a few hours longer without breaking down. That's all... that's all. - Bubba ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work. ~ Ethan Hawke

...feminism has to be absolutely utopian and unrealistic, far removed form any semblance of the world we're living in now. We have to hope for and envision something before agitating for it, rather than blithely giving up, and accepting the way things are. After all, utopian ideals are as ideological as the political foundations of the world we're currently living in. Above everything, feminism is a constant work in progress. We are all still learning. ~ Reni Eddo-Lodge

When an important writer recommends a work to you -- whether by openly naming the title; or by shy=covert use of it (which perhaps is the greater praise) then go right ahead and follow his [sic!, etc] momentous hint ! A man with expertise and taste has done trusty spade-work for you : {pre=reading} and winnowing 1000 volumes of antiquated chaff for you. Not to make grateful use of such a hint would mean my thoughtless=arrogant shoving aside all the precious, irreplaceable hours that a venerable predecessor spent reading for me. ~ Arno Schmidt

Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch'd with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev'ry place they ran it, ev'ry House pass'd by, Road cross'd, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev'ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. "So, - so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate 'Morphosis, - and all History remember? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?" "Not the worst I've handed in. And had they wish'd to pay for Coloring? Why, tha'd scarcely knaah the Place . . . ?" "This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying, all the time." Dixon, his face darken'd by the Years of Weather, may be allowing himself to blush in safety. "Could have us'd a spot of Orpiment, all the same. Some Lapis . . . ? ~ Thomas Pynchon

I wonder how long it takes for these people we elect to forget who they work for? ~ Dan Groat

I've been very lucky to work on a wide variety of projects, including two long-run and top-10 dramatic television shows. That is why it is so important to offer a helping hand to the next generation of young Latinos coming up behind me. ~ Jimmy Smits

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all. Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. ~ George R R Martin

It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt's and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration ... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary. ~ William Howard Taft

Every film is hard work, and a few lucky people do get Oscars for what they do, and it's recognition for all that hard work on a certain level. If you didn't do the hard work, you wouldn't be standing there. On the other hand, people do a lot of hard work and don't get Oscars, so it's a mixture of glory and injustice at the same time. ~ Walter Murch

My Everest is not your Everest. Your Everest is not mine. We all have an Everest. Each of us. Sometimes the peak is literally Mount Everest but most times it lies deep within us, figuratively occupying a mountainous inner space. It calls us to rise up, to do what we formerly labeled as impossible, and to be who we deeply and desperately want to be. I know that I have found an Everest when my soul furiously pokes me repeatedly until I listen. Heeding this call to passionate adventure of any sort initiates a journey of intense immense proportion that changes every molecule of my being. ~ T.A. Loeffler

Companies aren't families. They're battlefields in a civil war. ~ Charles Duhigg

I begin to describe a three-tier cake. The bottom tier would be a deep, dark devil's food cake filled with thick chocolate custard. The middle tier would be a vanilla cake filled with a fluffy vanilla mousse and a layer of roasted strawberries. The top tier, designed to be removed whole and frozen for the first anniversary, would be one layer of chocolate cake and one of vanilla with a strawberry buttercream filling. The whole cake would be covered in a layer of vanilla buttercream, perfectly smoothed, and the tiers separated by a simple line of piped dots, looking like a string of pearls. ~ Stacey Ballis

Juarez had become a failed city. The mayor of Juarez lived in El Paso. Not only did he not live in his own city, he didn't live in his own country. You had all these kids out of school who didn't want to work because they saw their mothers toiling in jobs for hardly any cash. ~ Beto O'Rourke

Professional bodybuilding is a sport of total dedication. You must dedicate every aspect of every day to the attainment of your goals if you want to succeed. It is not enough to merely go to the gym to "work out." You must put all of your concentration and focus on each rep, on each set, on each exercise to have a successful workout. ~ Nasser El Sonbaty

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light. ~ Edvard Munch

We all swim deep in the river of our ancestry. ~ Richard Paul Evans

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift. ~ Josef Pieper

We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies. ~ Marc Andreessen

Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven."
"How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?"
"Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Something about his receding hairline just drives me mad. ~ Seventhswan

Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise ... Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories ~ Richard Bach

No organization is going to be successful unless it places a high value on its employees and engages them in the work that it's doing. ~ Mary Burke

The ministerial work must be managed purely for God and the salvation of the people, and not for any private ends of our own. ~ Richard Baxter

People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can't bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don't like to do (or are unable to do). ~ Ray Dalio

If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works. ~ Eugene Delacroix

We need to approach the Bible each day with a spirit of deep humility, recognizing that our understanding of spiritual truth is at best incomplete and to some extent inaccurate ... we should approach the Scriptures in humility and expect the Spirit to humble us even further as we continue being taught by Him from His Word. ~ Jerry Bridges

I think one thing we went through was common to a lot of people: You work your whole life to achieve something, then you achieve it and find out that you still have good days and bad days. So you start thinking, 'Is that all there is?' After a while you calm down and get back to work. ~ Elliot Easton

The women also put my life of privilege, opportunity, independence, and freedom into perspective. As an American woman, I was spoiled: to work, to make decisions, to be independent, to have relationships with men, to feel sexy, to fall in love, to fall out of love, to travel. I was only twenty-six, and I had already enjoyed a lifetime of new experiences. ~ Lynsey Addario