“[At Boston College] I started working on the kinds of skills that you need for comedy. It's about being creative and learning to use your gift for being able to let loose and be very unself-conscious. It took me time though before I was really able to get comfortable doing that.” NeedsKindUseAbleCreativeComedyCollegeSkillsComfortableConsciousBe CreativeBoston Author:Amy Poehler
“Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.” WritingMindHeartKindEmotionSkillsConsciousAffairShyCourageousFactoriesLove AffairConscious MindPossible Love Book:A Poetry Handbook Source: A Poetry Handbook
“We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, 'Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How's Carol?' involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble.” PeopleWholeAbleOrderUniverseDealsNiceStrangeProtectSkillsConsciousShadowCapacityInfiniteChaosContemplationComplexityEntityGlancesCarolsStrange PlacesRecursionStrange Times Book:Mostly Harmless Source: Mostly Harmless
“Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.” ThinkingSelfActionJobsSportsNaturalCreativeSkillsConversationConsciousPerformancesSellingPianoSpontaneousSelf ConsciousMerchandiseCyberneticsPsycho Cybernetics Book:Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded Source: Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded