The incredible lightness of being - Milan Kundena

• There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weights so heavy as the pain one feeld with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination
• In Terezas eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood
• Communism was merely another father, a father equally strict and limited, a father who forbade
• If you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes
• Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most narive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answer
• Tereza suddenly recalled the first days of the invasion. People in every city and town had pulled down the street signs; sign posts had disappeared. Overnight, the country had become nameless. For seven days, Russian troops wandered the countryside, not knowing where they were. The officers searched for newspaper offices, for television and radio stations to occupy, but could not find them. Whenever they asked, they would get either a shrug of the shoulders or false names and directions.
• Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar... An actor is someone who in early chilfhood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public. Without that basic consent, which has nothing to do with talent, which goes deeper than talent, no one can become an actor. Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail.
• Here he was, doing things he didnt care a damn about, and enjoying it. Now he understood what made people happy when they took a job without feeling the compulsion of an internal "Es muss sein!" and forgot it the moment they left for home every evening. This was the first time he had felt that blissful indifference. [...] The "Es muss sein" of his profession (a doctor) had been like a vampire sucking blood.
• And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decisions: we are not granted a second, third or fouth life in which to compare various decisions.
• And not wonder: Political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words, and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch.
• The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.
• If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, "Look, I'm sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Cant you come up with something different?" And tehrein lies the whole of mans plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

Focus focus focus

Martin is the best-selling author of the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The first book in the series, A Game of Thrones,  it has already sold more than 25 million copies.

What is most surprising isn't how good the books are, but how, exactly, Martin writes his best-selling works…

In total, Martin has written almost 2 million words for the series thus far…

That is a total of 1,770,000 words—an incredible effort. [4] And what does Martin use to churn out such an amazing quantity of work?

He writes the novels with a program that most people have never even heard of: WordStar 4.0. To give you an idea of just how ancient this program is, here's a picture of the typical WordStar screen…

Martin says, “I still do all my writing on an old DOS machine running WordStar 4.0, the Duesenberg of word processing software (very old, but unsurpassed).”

He goes on, “I am not on Facebook. I am not on Twitter. I will not be on the next new thing to come along, the one that makes Facebook and Twitter as obsolete as GEnie and CompuServe and The Source, those halcyon communities of yore.” [5]

Focus, Consistency, and Patience

One of the greatest lessons I've learned from weightlifting is that there are 3 simple things that you need for success.

1. Focus: You can't be good at everything and it's hard to be great at more than one thing, so pick the one thing you're going to become great at and focus on it.
2. Consistency: Focus is useless if you're only focused every now and then. It's showing up time after time that makes the difference.
3. Patience: If you're focused and consistent, then let time work for you. Results will come when they come. Focus on the system, not the goal.

George R.R. Martin's creative process employs all three of these methods.

Focus. He writes on a computer without the internet, without social media, without apps or distractions or graphics. But his computer can do one very important thing: type words. And typing words is his craft. That's what he needs to create. He is 100 percent focused on doing the work that matters and he has completely eliminated anything that impedes that goal.

Consistency. Martin was a working writer for twenty years  He's not just focused on writing when it's easy. He's focused on writing, plain and simple.

Patience. continued commitment to the process when you're not being rewarded for it yet. [6]

The Minimum You Need to Succeed

George “WordStar” Martin is selling more books than nearly anyone on the planet and his computer can't even send an email. Think about that for a moment.

So often we think that we need more to be successful. More outside funding for our startup. More software programs or productivity tools to handle our to-do list. More business contacts, a bigger network. More clothes or cars or credit cards.

But maybe what we really need is less. Maybe what we really need are fewer distractions and more focus. Maybe what we really need are a few carefully chosen constraints that narrow our energy onto what really matters rather than compiling a bunch of resources that pull us away from what we actually need to do.