Author: Kelsey Mihachik

“It’s traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That’s because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound.” – pg. 27

“It’s weird when you feel your dream slipping away from you. Especially when you have no other dreams.” – pg. 77

“Sure, there are moments of panic and occasional bouts of crying, but there’s also the joy of creating something I love.” – pg. 101

“People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That’s a mistake.” – pg. 218

“People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you’re succeeding. People do not get scared when you’re failing.” – pg. 222

“I want to get under people’s skin and provoke in addition to having a hopeful message.” – pg. 20

“If I’ve learned anything – anything – getting older, it’s the value of moment-to-moment enjoyment. […] So if I come here and talk to you, if I have an enjoyable three hours, God damn it, that counts.” – Albert Brooks, pg. 45

“It makes everyone feel better to acknowledge that no one has it together. I mean, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have this big, dark cloud hanging over them. Just knowing that makes me feel better.” – Amy Schumer, pg. 52

“But you learn more from fucking up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don’t let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.” – Chris Rock, pg. 70

“Certain stories can be very small, but if you’re incredibly honest about them, there’s so much to do there.” – pg. 114

“I feel like most comedians have broken parents who don’t know how to mirror you; they want you to take care of them. So you spend your life trying to please other people and thinking that you are significant because you can change the world or change things, but you find out that you really can’t, and then you’re miserable.” – pg. 197

“I think it means so much whenever you see somebody that you relate to in whatever way kicking ass and succeeding.” – pg. 242

“I didn’t know why, but I liked that people were telling everybody to fuck off. But I found that I didn’t have very strong opinions when I was a stand-up comedian. I didn’t have the anger to do it. So I wrote.” – Mike Nichols, pg. 367

“And everybody’s like, ‘You’re fucking rich,’ but they don’t get it. They don’t get that you have to fucking do it. It’s not about if you’re rich or not. Because it’s what you love. You have to do it because that’s the only thing you know how to do.” – Roseanne Barr, pg. 396

“Making a movie takes so much out of you, but it also gives you so much. […] It’s a love relationship in one way, in terms of negotiating what you need from it, and what it needs from you. It’s also a parent relationship, in that you can’t need too much from it. You have to give to it unconditionally and you have to allow it to be who it is – not to put your needs on it. And then you let it go – it graduates high school and you send it off into the world; you’ve done everything you can do.” – Spike Jonze, pg. 447

“It’s a real challenge because success never satisfies whatever you thought it was going to do for you. You think, oh, I thought success would heal me and it doesn’t. So you have to look for new reasons to keep making things.” – pg. 498

“So much stuff doesn’t work, but you don’t expect everything to work.” – David Sedaris, pg. 553

“I think it’s better not to know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.” – pg. 14

“You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.” – pg. 25

“I told them I stopped because I was turning love into an accomplishment, and he was turning accomplishment into love, and neither of those things would ever quite be the other.” – pg. 57

“In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of, ‘perfect.’ […] The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected, and then could never replicate.” – pg. 73

“You meet a finite number of people in your life. It feels to you like it’s infinite, but it’s not. […] You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling is so, so finite.” – pg. 84

“People – even good, impressive people – always want something simple and unimpressive.” – pg. 130

“Is love such a strong force that it needs to be obeyed by the people who lie outside it?” – pg. 133

“It’s not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.” – pg. 148

“So I learned: cut out the middle man. Make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody. Everybody already knows. I told them.”

“I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man. More cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The truth is, I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t.”

“I fight to make the people who love me proud. To make the people who hate me seethe. I fight for anyone who has ever been lost, who has ever been left, or who is battling their own demons.” – pg. 1

“Life is a fight from the minute you take your first breath to the moment you exhale your last.” – pg. 2

“The moment you stop viewing your opponent as a threat is the moment you leave yourself open to getting beat.” – pg. 23

“All the successes and greatest joys in my life are a result of the absolute worst things.” – pg. 31

“Most people focus on the wrong thing: they focus on the result, not the process. The process is the sacrifice; it is all the hard parts – the sweat, the pain, the tears, the losses. You make sacrifices anyway. You learn to enjoy them, or at least embrace them. In the end, it is the sacrifices that must fulfill you.” – pg. 63

“You have to be able to win every match twice on your worst day.” – pg. 71

“When you and everyone around you are immersed in one small community, it is easy to mistake it for the whole world. But once you break away, you realize that no one outside your tiny circle gives a shit about the stupid stuff that was at the center of your little world. When you understand that, you discover there is a much bigger, better world out there.” – pg. 97

“Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it.” – pg. 116

“When people say, ‘Oh, you’re so cocky. You’re so arrogant,’ I feel like they’re telling me that I think too highly of myself. My question for them is: ‘Who are you to tell me that I need to think less of myself?’ People want to project their own insecurities on others, but I refuse to allow them to put that on me.” – pg. 125

“When you’re in the middle of a hustle, there are going to be times when your life is complete shit and you’ve got absolutely nothing to show for the effort you’ve put in. […] I’m talking about the times where, if it were happening to someone else, you would silently be thanking God that it wasn’t happening to you. […] Those are the moments when you have to remind yourself that this experience is a defining moment in your life, but you are not defined by it.” – pg. 143

“I knew I was going to make something of myself, I just had to decide what that was going to be.” – pg. 145

“Once you’ve conquered the worst things that could happen, there is no need to fear the unknown. You are fearless.” – pg. 177

“I needed to go beyond what anyone else thought was reasonable and then go beyond that. Every day I did that, I moved one day closer to achieving my goal. At night, I slept soundly, absolutely certain that I could not have done any more.” – pg. 191

“You can spend your entire life waiting for perfect. The perfect job. The perfect partner. The perfect opponent. Or you can acknowledge that there is always a better time or a better place or a better opportunity and refuse to let that fact hold you back from doing everything to make the present moment the perfect moment.” – pg. 199

“Once you give them the power to tell you you’re great, you’ve also given them the power to tell you you’re unworthy. Once you start caring about people’s opinions of you, you give up control. […] One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people’s approval and my happiness were not related.” – pg. 213

“People will mock you when they see you are emotionally ravaged by caring so much. But it is exactly that passion that separates you from them; it is that passion that makes you the best.” – pg. 249

“I believe great people do things before they are ready.” – pg. xv

“Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.” – pg. 21

“Sticking up for ourselves in the same way we would one of our friends is a hard but satisfying thing to do. Sometimes it works.” – pg. 23

“Sometimes we get defensive about what we feel guilty about. My friend Louis CK likes to say that, ‘guilt is an intersection.’ Getting out of it means making a choice and moving forward.” – pg. 70-71

“Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.” – pg. 109

“You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.” – pg. 223-225

“You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, ‘I made it!’ You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful.” – pg. 225

“Change is the only constant. Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being.” – pg. 279

“To be honest, I tend to romanticize the past, and though I appreciate all the conveniences of modern life, sometimes I yearn for simpler times.” – pg. 12

“Why do we all say we prefer honesty but rarely give that courtesy to others?” – pg. 66

“But the things that really make us fall for someone are their deeper, more unique qualities, and usually those only come out during sustained interactions.” – pg. 146

“Dating has its downsides, but it can be a lot of fun. Even when it isn’t, when you’re meeting other people there are always experiences that you remember and learn from.” – pg. 170

“After many late nights and brutal mornings, though, I realized that most amazing, magical women don’t walk into a bar at 3:35 am.” – pg. 210

“We want a soul mate. And we are willing to look very far, for a very long time, to find one.” – pg. 238

“No matter how much people want things to be different, I don’t think we can defeat the insecurities and tendencies built into our internal psychology.” – pg. 242