“There's a great quote from Thomas Merton that I used to have inside my notebook for a while, and I think this works whether you're a spiritual person or not. He said, and I'm paraphrasing: 'If you write for God, you will enlighten a lot of people and you will be fulfilled; if you write for other people, you may make a splash in the world and be known for some time and then you'll fade away like everybody else does. And if you write for yourself, after 10 minutes, you will look at what you yourself have written and you'll be so disgusted that you'll wish you were dead.' And I challenge myself with that all the time. At the point where I'm most frustrated, I think that's mostly vanity. You do your work because that's what you do. You either get satisfaction out of doing it or your don't.”

-- Joe Henry to Jim Walsh, back in 1991. Jim posted this on Facebook in honor of Joe's birthday today.