Dustin Hoffman on Picasso on persistence and dedication

February 15, 2013 by Joshua
in Blog

I saw Dustin Hoffman speak on persistence and dedication to one’s craft by quoting Pablo Picasso. I loved it.

He quoted Picasso as saying

if someone took away his paints he would use pastels. If someone took away his pastels he’d use crayons. If he didn’t have crayons he’d use pencil on paper. If he didn’t have pencil and paper he’d spit on his finger and draw with the wetness on the wall.

Who doesn’t want passion like that?

I hope people who think you just find passion realize Picasso didn’t just find how much he loved creating art. He wasn’t born knowing what paint and pastel was so how could he have loved them so much? For that matter, he wasn’t born knowing what art was.

He developed his passion by recognizing something he liked and building on it. He got out of it in proportion to what he put into it.

You can too.

You can’t do it any other way.

The only alternative is not to create a passion at all.

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