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Key to success: Vision Key to success: Passion Key to success: Perseverance Key to success: Preparation Key to success: Courage Key to success: Integrity Key to success: The American Dream Keys to success homepage More quotes on Passion More quotes on Vision More quotes on Courage More quotes on Integrity More quotes on Preparation More quotes on Perseverance More quotes on The American Dream


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Johnny Cash

Country Music Legend

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight. When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, I'll write it. Songwriting is a very strange thing as far as I'm concerned. It's not something that I can say, "Next Tuesday morning, I'm gonna sit down and write songs." I can't do that. No way. If I say, I'm going to the country and take a walk in the woods next Tuesday, then the probability is, next Tuesday night I might write a song Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I do. I have to get fed. I have to get filled up in order to pour out. Really have to.
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Dale Chihuly

Master Glass Artist

So I collaborated with a lot of people, with people that were better than me. I collaborated with students. I just wanted to make things. At that time, we didn't care what it was for or who it was for. So I learned a lot from a lot of different people, and I learned to work with a team, and glassblowing is done best as a team. So I got good at directing and working with a team, and that enabled me to do more things. If you needed a bigger project, bigger team. And when I had the money, I would get a facility and hire the people. When I didn't have the money, I'd beg them to help me! Whatever it took to do the work. So slowly, I got, I guess it was about five years after I quit teaching that I could afford to get my own space. I could afford to make a down payment on a $250,000 building, and then a year or two later rent a building and build a $50,000 glass shop or something. And so then I had my own studio and my own shop. And then five years later, I could buy a bigger building and build a bigger shop and have a bigger team. And so now, I have, I don't know, I probably have the biggest studio of just about anybody, in glass or anything else, for that matter. I have a big team of people.
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Dale Chihuly

Master Glass Artist

It's important to find ways to help it happen. If you're an artist, you need to work, you need to draw. If you're a writer, you need to write. If you don't allow it to come in, it's less likely to happen. But it can happen in any way. Somebody could write a poem, I suppose, in five minutes, and somebody else might take a year, but that doesn't make one better than the other. It does tend to help to have had a few years' experience, to be creative. Although you can see it, creativity, in young students and young people. Some are more creative than others, but it helps to have understood the craft usually. Like cooking dinner, you know, you might have a shot at if you're 15 years old, but somebody who's 25 years old is gonna better know how to do it. You have to know the materials, and you have to have worked with the materials.
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Johnnetta Cole

Past President of Spelman College

I give Mrs. Vance all the credit. Because, as if it were this moment, I remember my first day in first grade. And Miss Vance (She was called, by her friends, Bunny Vance. Not very tall in stature, but a giant in terms, it seemed to us, of knowledge, and compassion, and wisdom) asked that each of us should say our name. And we began to go around the classroom. And I remember it came to my turn, and I stood up as I had been instructed to do and sort of bowed my head a little and mumbled who I was. And Mrs. Vance came directly in front of me, looked me directly into my eyes and said, "Never, ever again mumble who you are. Stand up, feel good about who you are and speak to the world."
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