In my studio, it is unkempt and unattractive. Once I’m in my work, I don’t notice where I am.

I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

Steve Jobs‘ ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

We do not wish to enter Heaven until our work is done, for it would make us uneasy if there were one single soul left to be saved by our means.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

I’m never on Twitter. I’m never on Instagram. And that’s not by choice: it’s just that those things never really interested me. I might post a picture here and there, but that ain’t really been my focus.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

The mixed martial arts way of life will give you focus.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

I’m just looking to learn, grow, stay focused, and become a better fighter and a better athlete.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

You have to stay fresh and blank in your mind when you go out to bat. You complicate things, and you’re gone.

I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

In the divine milieu, all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them. There they concentrate, little by little, all that is purest and most attractive in them without loss and without danger of subsequent corruption.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘