Neil Gaiman: "A freelance life..."

"A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles on a desert island and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you. Appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things for every bottle that winds up coming back."

–Neil Gaiman's commencement speech on the life of an artist