I consider parenting skills, those skills that help children: (1) develop clear and important goals; and (2) figure out flexible and persistent ways of achieving their goals.
I am persistent about everything I believe in. If there's a film I want to do, a record, a Broadway show - I do it. Everybody can hate it but I will still do it. I am fearless that way.
What keeps my flame burning is, first, I'm ornery and persistent. I don't like giving up on things and I believe in my band and I just happen to have the sort of personality that really likes to see things to the bitter end. The second reason is the incredible people I've been fortunate to meet as a result of pursuing this insane, money-hemorrhaging enterprise. Literally every time I release a well-reviewed, poor-selling record, the net result is that I end up meeting more kind, like-minded, creative and brilliant people. That's really all the reward I need.
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers-perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.
You must bring every particle of your energy, unanswerable resolution, your best efforts, your persistent industry to your task or the best will not come out of you. You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure.
Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.
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