Matthieu Ricard Quotes

I very rarely play the piano at home. Deliberately, so that when I do play it, I love it.

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

I played piano as a kid; I still play a little bit.

However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say.

I like to write. I like to do that when I'm not working so I don't go totally crazy, and so I feel like I'm still doing something constructive.

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

Writers were never meant to be professionals. Writing is not a profession, it is an activity, an essentially amateur occupation. It is what you do when you are not living.

Photography is an individual passion of mine. I don't get paid to do it, although people offer me money. I do it because I love it, and if there's no money attached, I don't have to do anything. It's my weekend away, my vacation, whether it's an hour or five hours or editing photos on my laptop in the middle of the night. It gives me relief from all the other stuff.

I didn't know what I was gonna get the first time I sat down at a piano, but I loved it and it became my playmate for life.

If it [dabbling in art] didn't amuse me, I beg you to believe that I wouldn't do it.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

Whenever I'm done with an album cycle, I still wanna write music. If I'm bored when I'm at home, which never happens, my first instinct is to go to the piano and bang something out.

You're just like, "I like doing this - it's something I have a lot of passion for." You happen to do it, you enjoy songwriting, and eventually if you're writing enough songs, then you fall into it.

I want a life that makes music - not just practices the piano.

Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.

It's not a bloody piano, it's a clarenARt...you weird talking person.

Some days I feel like a piano: kind of short, always in black & white, always expected to produce music.

I like to write music for fun. That's my hustle, my grind, my means of stayin' alive, and it's also my recreation, too.

...the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.

I'm going to be a better actor, or I'm going to try to be a better actor. I'm going to try to be a better musician. I'm going to be an artist instead of just this one thing.

It's what I wanted to do with my life. Not necessarily just direct Jim Carrey movies, but to direct and act and write and create and along the way discover what it is that I'm about.

As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love.