John Zorn Quotes

You must work and should not be lazy if you want to be happy.

Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

At my ashram, people work long hours joyfully because they are inspired. When people are involved and joyfully doing something, they usually turn out ten times more and do more than what they would normally do as a duty.

We believe in working hard and having fun at the same time. It's a way of life for me, and I feel tremendous.

There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live - I have no use for the sour-faced man - and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.

It's very simple: When you're working your hardest, the world opens up to you.

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

I'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working. ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.

He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous

Tis toil's reward, that sweetens industry, As love inspires with strength the enraptur'd thrush.

Not a long day, but a good heart rids worke.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

If you're not frightened that you might fail, you'll never do the job. If you're frightened, you'll work like crazy.

Your mood doesn't really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

I think anyone's success depends on working hard, Industriousness and Enthusiasm, enjoying what you are doing. You can't work your best if you're not enjoying what you are doing. No way you can force yourself to.

That adage about genius being 5 percent inspiration and 95 perspiration - it's true.

Not harder than it should be, no. We're about the business, we're about the work. It's all about the work, always. We have fun and laugh and there're days that are more intense than others, but we're there to make it better. He's always going to try and make it better, I'm always going to try and make it better. So you accept anything, you accept whatever it takes to get it up on the screen and make it worthy.

Whatever you do, if you do it hard enough you'll enjoy it. The important thing is to work and work hard.

You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

Very few people know how to work. Inspiration, everybody has inspiration. That's just hot air.