Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance of how much you really
want to do it. If you’re going to try go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start.
And you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything
else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing
girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three
or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean
derision mockery isolation. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with
the gods. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there
is. If you can keep your head when If you can keep your head when all about you are
losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt
you but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts
your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just
the same. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make
a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build
’em up with worn-out tools and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe
a word about your loss. And so hold on when there is nothing in you. Do it do it do it,
all the way, all the way.