Gettin’ my quote on

I’ve been madly cleaning house in for a dinner party I’m hosting on Sunday. Among the things in my clutter was a 2007 pocket datebook, which I was about to throw away… when I noticed the notes I’d taken during my trip to Europe with Mandy last spring. Okay, it’s a keeper. Written inside the front cover is this quote by painter Georges Rouault, which I remember copying down while at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam:

You might as well deprive me of air, light, wine, coffee, and white bread, or of my precious friendships, as take away from me my “painterly keyboard.” 

I wrote it down because it spoke to me, it spoke directly to the passion that I feel for my line of work, at a time when I was afraid that the creative aspects of my job might be pulled out from under me when I returned to the States. I often think about how lucky I am that I’ve known, since childhood, what I wanted to do for a living.

If you’re not doing something you feel passionately about, you’re starving yourself.