YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Lester Bangs

We proudly return to kick off your week with a good one from Lester Bangs; possibly the greatest rock writer to ever be portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. For those unfamiliar with Bangs, make yourself familiar immediately. Begin by doing yourself a favor and seeking out his piece on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, it's devastating (in the best way.)

Meanwhile:

I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound, if erratic, is still my greatest pride -- because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Coco Chanel

Take it from fashion icon Coco Chanel--a woman who knew a thing or two about following through:

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Howard Thurman

In which oft-quoted author and educator Howard Thurman lays it all down for you:

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Andy Warhol

Let's kick off Friday--as well as the rest of your life--with this one from the man who needs no introduction, Andy Warhol (and let's hope your in Andy's second camp):

When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they DO want to, you can’t stop them.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: James Murphy

Whether you are/were a fan of LCD Soundsystem or not, know that frontman James Murphy (also co-founder of DFA Records) was recording singles in his apartment less than a decade ago. 

Few months back he sold out Madison Square Garden.

So with Murphy's uncanny prolificness in mind, today's "insight"--pulled from LCD's final record--is more of a question you just need to straight up ask yourself:

But honestly, and be honest with yourself, how much time do you waste? How much time do you blow every day?

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Nietzche

Leave it to 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzche to ask "Which best describes you?":

There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art and knowledge.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Maya Angelou

Heed the words of hallowed writer Maya Angelou--and get actualizing!

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Teddy Roosevelt

Kick your week off with this one from Teddy Roosevelt--and then keep it in the back of your mind for any time someone cuts your work down (or you cut down theirs):

When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Mark Twain

At first glance today's Daily Insight, courtesy of master wordsmith Mark Twain, might seem adversarial. Though we're believers in that its bluntness is nothing but accurate:

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

YOUR DAILY INSIGHT // As Told By: Gillian Welch

A simple, but no less crucial mantra, brought to us by one of our generation's (and we predict, future ones' as well) most essential songwriters; Gillian Welch.

Culled from "Everything Is Free" off her landmark record Time (The Revelator). Absorb this one and then embody it: 

Never minded working hard. It's who I'm working for.