It would be very, very dangerous for a wire walker to experience fear while he is balancing on the wire. Fear has its place on earth, before and maybe after a high-wire walk, but not during for me.
Wherever the career wasn't going the way I wanted it to, I would experience those disappointments, and I would put them somewhere where I could say, 'Come on now, you're still working. Keep your focus where it belongs.'
The essence of a general's job is to assist in developing a clear sense of purpose to keep the junk from getting in the way of important things.
When sadness happens in the middle of work, I separate my personal grief from my train of thought.
Players need to control their emotions as much as possible.
In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.
Playing for the national team, you are aware that a whole country wants you to succeed, but you mustn't get side-tracked.
It is important that you don't let your opponent impose his style of play on you. A part of that begins mentally. At the chessboard if you start blinking every time he challenges you then in a certain sense you are withdrawing. That is very important to avoid.
Arousal-control has been an issue for me since the beginning of my career.
Humans get distracted when we see and touch something.
I won't read novels while writing novels.
Staying interested in a match is a lot harder than many people think. Throughout my career, I've always had trouble in the early rounds of a tournament mainly because it was hard for me to psychologically get up until I got to the quarters or the semis. What happened a lot of times is that I would fall behind early, maybe even lose the first couple of sets in a five-set match and then begin to concentrate. Still it wasn't something I could control from the start.
It's important in any project to remain focused.
It's a fascinating job, to come in and be the most interesting person in an episode. Whoever the guest star is, that's the job - to maintain the interest and the focus for that 42 minutes or whatever, and it should be a huge relief to those people that are the leads in the shows.
The thing that I prefer, when I'm working on a book, is to do a seven-day week, because it's easy to lose some of the details of what you're doing along the way.
