“What to do now? How to detach yourself?
With every work that’s born you die a little.”

“For you was I born, for you do I have life, for you will I die, for you am I now dying.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons

“Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

“Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

“One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

“You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

“Every time I do a show, I die a little bit, but no shit is worth doing unless you're willing to die for it.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

“You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love