Will

“Stop thinking about the damn wall!” he said. “There is no wall. There are only bricks. Your job is to lay this brick perfectly. Then move on to the next brick. Then lay that brick perfectly. Then the next one. Don’t be worrying about no wall. Your only concern is one brick.”

When I focused on the wall, the job felt impossible. Never-ending. But when I focused on one brick, everything got easy—I knew I could lay one damn brick

When I focused on the wall, the job felt impossible. Never-ending. But when I focused on one brick, everything got easy—I knew I could lay one damn brick well

the secret to my success is as boring as it is unsurprising: You show up and you lay another brick. Pissed off? Lay another brick. Bad opening weekend? Lay another brick. Album sales dropping? Get up and lay another brick. Marriage failing? Lay another brick.

No matter what you’re going through, there is always another brick sitting right there in front of you, waiting to be laid. The only question is, are you going to get up and lay it?

ideology was centered on training us mentally and physically to handle life’s inevitable adversities, but what he unwittingly created was an environment of constant tension and anxiety.

Something bad happens to us, and we decide we’re never going to let that happen again. But in order to prevent it, we have to be a certain way. We choose the behaviors that we believe will deliver safety, stability, and love. And we repeat them, over and over again. In the movies, we call it a character; in real life, we call it personality.

How we decide to respond to our fears, that is the person we become.

I like math because it’s exact; I like when things add up. Numbers don’t play games or have moods or opinions.

“Never argue with a fool, because from a distance, people can’t tell who’s who.”

Comedy is an extension of intelligence.

The bigger the fantasy you live, the more painful the inevitable collision with reality. If you cultivate the fantasy that your marriage will be forever joyful and effortless, then reality is going to pay you back in equal proportion to your delusion.

Sometimes we’d rather blindfold ourselves than take a cold, hard look at the world exactly as it is.

Gigi had a magical, invisible power; she would never apply force, yet no one could resist her overwhelming energy.

it’s impossible to be unhappy when you’re grateful.

“So everywhere I go, I try to make everything I touch better.”

It is impossible to be angry, hateful, or violent when you’re doubled over laughing.

When we can joke about something—our pains, our problems, our tragedies—it makes them just a little bit more bearable.

Throughout my life, I have been haunted by an agonizing sense that I am failing the women I love. Over the years, in my romantic relationships, I would always do too much. Coddling, overprotecting, desperately trying to please them, even when they were totally fine. This insatiable desire to please manifested as an exhausting neediness.

Words can affect how people view themselves, how they treat each other, how they navigate the world. Words can build people up, or they can tear them down.