"The higher you get in the Mob, the bigger the bullseye gets on your chest."
- Regarding the Montreal Mafia, which is rooted in Sicily

"I like cars that feel like toys."
- Jerry Seinfeld

"The difference between good and great is a little extra effort."
- Michael Jordan

routine

"I would arise at 4:30am and work until 9pm six days per week. I tied sandbags to my legs to give more lift to my jumps."
- Li Cunxin, who has been described as the best dancer China has ever produced

"Now I as a painter shall never amount to anything important, I am absolutely sure of it."

- Vincent van Gogh

It has been estimated that we have between 90,000 and 150,000 thoughts per day.

Tavis Smiley: I raise all that to ask what is it about our culture, about our society, that makes that kind of political satire work so well today?

Ed Helms: We are so just rife with hypocrisy, it is all around us. It’s everywhere. It’s not just even in the political forum, it is in the media coverage, the news coverage, of politics is just so abundantly hypocritical at times.

I think that just from my experience on “The Daily Show,” that is what we always looked for. It was never an ideological angle, like how do we skewer the right wing or whatever. It was always who is being hypocritical here.

That is the very foundation of “The Colbert Report” is a character who is so ridiculously hypocritical (laughter) and self-involved that I think that it’s a release valve for fans who are just sort of fed up and angry with all of this hypocrisy around us, and then they get to see a guy like Jon Stewart just nail it, like really surgically dissect why what Barack Obama said in that situation was ludicrously hypocritical, or what Bill O’Reilly said, or whomever.

It’s also fun. There’s a little bit of an innocence to it because at the end of the day it’s just for laughs, and so it has some meaty content and some fun to it.

the warm world of soma

a tale of two Londons

Less-Confident People Are More Successful

1. Lower self-confidence makes you pay attention to negative feedback and be self-critical
2. Lower self-confidence can motivate you to work harder and prepare more
3. Lower self-confidence reduces the chances of coming across as arrogant or being deluded

Harvard Business Review article here.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”
- Buddha

Painting Guernica

"I've spent my whole life learning how to draw like a child."
- Picasso

"The 2nd century A.D. was the happiest time for humanity for the whole history of the world."
- Edward Gibbon

"Tamil Nadu is the most splendid province on earth [and is the world's last surviving classical civilization]."
- Marco Polo

"... ginger shall be hot i' the mouth." - Shakespeare

point of view

"Each generation gets better looking."
- Larry David

"When we look at history ... the objects traditionally tell us about the civility of the time."
- Karim Rashid

a way to describe it

"Four-year fresco"

Sport Sullivan: You know what you feed a dray horse in the morning if you want a day's work out of him?

Jimmy: What?

Sport Sullivan: Just enough so he knows he's hungry.

"ATMs created more jobs than they eliminated."
- Steve Forbes

"The moment of truth for an artist is confronting a blank canvas: 'What am I going to do?'"
- Frank Gehry

Image source here.

"I've been like a boy playing on the seashore diverting myself and now and then finding myself another smooth pebble or prettier shell than usual, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered."
- Issac Newton

A new web series by Jerry Seinfeld here.

"The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion no matter how persistent."
- Einstein

public private debate

"The Wright brothers figured out how to fly for $500 - the Smithsonian failed to do it for $50,000."
-Newt Gingrich

theory of art

"Great artists take incredible leaps and take big chances. Picasso did it. Dylan."
- Museum Curator

change

"Smile, Jim. They're customers, not suspects."
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"I've had the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of people across the world - from the Russian President down to Warren Buffet - and you hear the same story over and over: 'I had to stick through the times that I was in.' You have to change. You're constantly changing in our business.
- Jim Treliving

start

"Is starting hard? You know it is. I don't know what you do when you start, but I clean my desk; I make a lot of stupid appointments that sound important; avoidance, delay, denial. I'm always scared that I'm not going to know what to do. It's a terrifying moment. And then when I start, I'm always amazed: 'Oh, that wasn't so bad.'"
- Frank Gehry

distorted thinking

"Just because I think something doesn't necessarily mean that it's true."
- Cognitive Therapy 101

Image source here.

"A frog in the well doesn't know the big ocean, however he knows the height of the sky."
- Japanese proverb as related by Tabaimo

"Both a curse and a blessing to live in interesting times."
- Paraphrase of an ancient Chinese proverb

"All that's required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
- Sentiment attributed or misattributed to Edmund Burke

"I'm sorry about the long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one."
- Blaise Pascal

The guillotine was the standard method of execution in France until 1981, when capital punishment was outlawed.

"What makes a work of art great is ambiguity."
- Eric Kandel

m.o.

"Put more IQ on the problem."

- Bill Gates

"When I was young, I had such a vision of myself; I dreamt I'd be someone to be reckoned with in the world. But one learns one's scale. I have such a dread of ending my days alone."
- Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal 

"The key to acting is to look unwatched."
- Tilda Swinton

"In a team you can play to your strengths and hide your weaknesses."
- David Geffen 

maxim

"It's a lot easier to start tough and get nice than it is to start nice then get tougher."
- Coach Pat Summitt, University of Tennessee Lady Vols

"He on the side of technology wins."
- Attributed to Napoleon

"When critics get together they talk about aesthetics. When artists get together they talk about turpentine."
- Attributed to Picasso 

Glenn Frey: People connect – the songs connect with people, and somebody once said something really interesting to me. They said, “People didn’t just listen to the Eagles. They did things to the Eagles.”

They broke up with their girlfriend, (laughter) they got in a car with a bunch of guys and drove from Chicago to California. They asked somebody out that they never had the nerve to. You know what I’m saying? I think there was a big connection.

We were just trying to be as good as the people we admired. Our goals were not any bigger than that, really, but we did a really good job. We learned how to write songs, we learned how to make records, and we had a unique vocal sound. But I really think it’s the songs, and that’s why we’re still around.

"The hardest part is knowing what the customer wants/needs. The easy part is the engineering. And the business comes after that."
- Attributed to Steve Jobs by Kurt Eichenwald

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. 
- Shakespeare, Henry V

"Anticipation itself is a sensory delight; a moment to be savoured and relished; not to be rushed into and wallowed in like swine in a trough."
- Major Charles Emerson Winchester III

The Blue of Distance, 2008

"I use landscape to change my emotional state."

- Catherine Opie

Georgia O'Keeffe, Starlight Night, 1917

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying or reassuring."
- Carl Sagan

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways." Mike said. "Gradually, then suddenly."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"[Globally] there are more people with mobile phones than toilets."
- Rockefeller Foundation

Andy Dufresne: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy Dufresne: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. 

Wayne Gretzky weighed 165 lbs when he was in the NHL.