Gift, like genius, I often think only means an infinite capacity for taking pains. – Jane Ellice Hopkins

No one understands that you have given everything. You must give more. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Do not waste a minute, not a second, in trying to demonstrate to others the merit of your own performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it, but you can labor steadily on to something which needs no advocate but itself. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” The Atlantic Monthl

If a jobs worth doing, its worth doing well. – Proverb