Csikszentmihalyi Flow

In the flow state, Csikszentmihalyi found, people engage so completely in what they are doing that they lose track of time. Hours pass in minutes. All sense of self recedes. At the same time, they are pushing beyond their limits and developing new abilities. Indeed, the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to capacity.
People emerge from each flow experience more complex, Csikszentmihalyi found. They become more self-confident, capable, and sensitive.The experience becomes "autotelic," meaning that the activity actually becomes its own reward.
"To improve life, one must improve the quality of experience," he says. One of the chief advantages of flow is that it enables people to escape the state of "psychic entropy," the distraction,depression,and dispiritedness that constantly threaten them.

:Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mee-high Chick-sent-me-high-ee)

One Talks, One Walks

George Orwell, defining the core of mediocrity :

The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish.
After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery.
But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end...

Marsellus Wallace, you couldn't keep this man down, ever :

"Now the night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting, that's pride fuckin' wit ya. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. Fight through that shit."