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saying there were “no hits,” “nothing that could be played on the radio.” I went to the beach and wrote “Spirit in the Night,” came home, busted out my rhyming dictionary and wrote “Blinded by the Light,” two of the best things on the record. I was able to find Clarence, who’d been MIA since that first night in the Prince, and I got his cool saxophone on those last two cuts. It made a big difference. This was the most fully realized version of the sound I had in my head that I would get on my first album. The pre–E Street band did their best to sound studio-worthy while the words flowed like a storm surge, crashing into one another with no regret. I never wrote completely in that style again. Once the record was released, I heard all the Dylan comparisons, so I steered away from it. But the lyrics and spirit of Greetings came from an unself-conscious place. Your early songs emerge from a moment when you’re writing with no sure prospect of ever being heard. Up until then, it’s been just you and your music. That only happens once.

Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen

ENJOYMENT AND RENEWAL Simply changing channels is an effective method to refuel emotionally. During the past decade, we have been surprised and dismayed to discover how infrequently most people undertake activities simply because they are enjoyable and emotionally nourishing. One of the most revealing questions that we ask the clients who come through our training is how frequently in their lives they experience a sense of joy or deep satisfaction. The most common answer we get is “rarely.” Think for a moment about your own life. How many hours a week do you devote to activities purely for the pleasure and renewal they provide? What percentage of the time would you describe yourself as feeling deeply relaxed? When was the last time you truly let go and felt fully disconnected?

The Power of Full Engagement

Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz

As I have said, that vast plot of Tennessee land * was held by my father twenty years—intact. When he died in 1847, we began to manage it ourselves. Forty years afterward, we had managed it all away except 10,000 acres, and gotten nothing to remember the sales by. About 1887—possibly it was earlier—the 10,000 went. My brother found a chance to trade it for a house and lot in the town of Corry, in the oil regions of Pennsylvania. About 1894 he sold this property for $250. That ended the Tennessee Land. If any penny of cash ever came out of my father’s wise investment but that, I have no recollection of it. No, I am overlooking a detail. It furnished me a field for Sellers and a book. Out of my half of the book I got $15,000 or $20,000; out of the play I got $75,000 or $80,000—just about a dollar an acre. It is curious: I was not alive when my father made the investment, therefore he was not intending any partiality; yet I was the only member of the family that ever profited by it. I shall have occasion to mention this land again, now and then, as I go along, for it influenced our life in one way or another during more than a generation. Whenever things grew dark it rose and put out its hopeful Sellers hand and cheered us up, and said “Do not be afraid—trust in me—wait.” It kept us hoping and hoping, during forty years, and forsook us at last. It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us—dreamers, and indolent. We were always going to be rich next year—no occasion to work. It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich—these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1

Mark Twain, Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, a...

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