A Quote by Kenny Werner

If one's life depends on doing something right, as in the case of the tightrope walker, one will practice on a much deeper level. — © Kenny Werner
If one's life depends on doing something right, as in the case of the tightrope walker, one will practice on a much deeper level.
Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).
How often does the tightrope walker balance when walking across the tightrope? All the time! It is the same thing if you really want to have a successful career, and you want to have a happy home life. It is a matter of balance.
An effective strategy almost always involves both doing something and not doing something, and knowing when to choose the right alternative. To succeed, the strategy that is chosen ultimately depends on the acquisition of as much information as possible.
Spiritual Balance is the obvious answer to the obsession that sometimes accompanies religious practice, occult practice, philosophical understandings - the assertion that one is right - that something that you're doing is better than something somebody else is doing, the way you're doing it is better than the way someone else is doing it.
I'm not prescribing non-doing as a universal response to our problems. Sometimes, something obviously needs to be done. And we retreat into a spiritual or meditative state that we fancy up by calling it mindfulness, but really it's an unhealthy detachment and a shrinking back from life. But culturally, it's much more common to be trapped in habits of reaction, whether on a systemic level or on a personal level. That's where the non-doing comes in, which is something that we don't really have room for. I think that it's something we need to embrace as part of the creative process.
Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice.
There's more to life than passing exams, and paper qualifications can only take you so far. A lot depends on luck, and on being in the right place at the right time, which was certainly true in my case.
My cousin just died. He was only 19. He got stung by a bee - the natural enemy of a tightrope walker.
If you had a friend who was a tightrope walker, and you were walking down a sidewalk, and he fell, that would be completely unacceptable.
It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a vet or a tightrope walker. But I have no sense of balance, and I can't bear animals dying, so I abandoned both ideas.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
If you're frightened of damaging yourself, you increase the risk of doing just that. Consider the tightrope walker. Do you think he spares any thought for falling while he's walking the rope? No, he accepts the risk, and enjoys the thrill of braving the danger. If you spend your whole life being careful not to break anything, you'll get terribly bored, you know... I can't think of anything more fun than being impulsive.
You know what needs to be done when you're a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if you're an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you don't really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if you're doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. I'm hoping that my work will surpass my own life.
Newton had a very good description of gravity, back in the day, and then Einstein came along and dug a little bit deeper. Science is like peeling an onion. You go deeper and deeper and deeper, and it doesn't stop. It's not like you will get to a right answer.
Designing is a lot like a high-wire act - if the tightrope walker is only six inches off the ground, where's the excitement?
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