passion
I don’t believe in this “gifted few” concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.
100 Quotes by Charles Eames, ed. by Carla Hartman and Eames Demetrios (Eames Office, 2007).
We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
“The Middle Years,” in Scribner’s Magazine, May 1893, 609–620.
Work: work doesn’t solve everything but when a person is practicing the work that he loves, you can always tell; there is a rhythm in their absorption which shows in the eyes; their eyes glitter with sights brought back from private places: when the right words come together the world becomes at that moment mathematically perfect: so with each stitch of the cobbler’s machine, the tailor’s needle. They are seeing unity, peace, in some tiny fragment of the world and they know that this fragment is themselves.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (vol 5, 1947–1955) (New York: First Harvest, 1975), 172.