Rumi: "Raise your words, not..."

"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."

—Rumi

St. Francis of Assisi: "He who works..."

"He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."

 —St. Francis of Assisi

John Adams: "I must study..."

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music..."

Itzhak Perlman: "One must always practice..."

"One must always practice slowly. If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly."

–Itzhak Perlman ("the thinking violinist")

Albert Einstein: "Everything is energy..."

"Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics."

–Albert Einstein

George Carlin: "Don't just teach your..."

"Don't just teach your children to read... Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything."

-George Carlin

Neil Gaiman: "Go and make interesting mistakes..."

"Go and make interesting mistakes. Make amazing mistakes. Make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make Good Art."

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

Neil Gaiman: "First of all..."

"First of all, when you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you're doing. This is great. People who know what they're doing know the rules and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone from doing that particular thing again."

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

Neil Gaiman: "If you have an idea..."

"If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go do that. And that's much harder than it sounds. And sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine... "

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

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

Neil Gaiman: "Make your art..."

"Make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do... The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself, that's the moment you may be starting to get it right."


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

Neil Gaiman: "You get work because..."

"You get work because you get work, but people keep working because their work is good, and because they're easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it's good and they like you. And you don't have to be as good as everyone else if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you."

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