Eric maisel quotes

All space is space in which to create.

To obsess too virulently is to walk alone in anxiety. But to obsess too little is to wall oneself off from one's own creativity.

Creativity is part sweat - not just beads of it, but sometimes buckets.

You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

The artist dreams of works of real breadth; but, limited by his personality and the nature of his medium, limited by inner disturbances and loss of purpose, he often works more narrowly than he'd intended.

You can't plan in advance for everything - every mood swing, every mistake you might make in execution, every shift in your circumstances. But you can keep updating your plan.

Rekindling hope, engaging in inner work, and venturing into the world amount to a complete plan for picking yourself up when you're down.

If we had the consciousness of a cat or a dog, we would have it in us to become perfect Zen masters. We could gnaw on a bone, take a nap, play with a spider until we killed it, get our litter just right, and be innocently and serenely present. Meaning would mean nothing to us, nor would we need it to mean anything. We would be free, and we would be spared. But, we are human beings, and we posses that odd duck – human consciousness.

Settle into mystery as you would settle into your most comfortable chair. Listen. Have visions. Lose yourself.

The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace - and even whole-being rejuvenation - by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky.

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round.

The artist, who must venture into the studio and risk there, and then venture into the marketplace and risk again, is obliged to learn how her defences work, so that she can drop and raise her guard instantly.

Remind yourself of the value of detaching from work that's out of your hands and committing to new work that wants to be born.

When the artist activates his being, awakens to his surroundings, and sets himself the task of creating, connections are made out of conscious awareness that return coalesced as inspiration.

Affirmations are not bound up in rules. An affirmation can be long or short, poetic or plain. If you love a phrase and find that it helps you, that is a valid affirmation.

Art is manipulation, the management of material, the directing of fate... Who does that directing?

A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio.

An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.

Who knows how many artists fail because the light that shines through them is defracted in a thousand directions and not concentrated in a single beam?

Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.

Almost nothing beautiful or brilliant happens unless a person has thought about it a lot.

When you consciously decide to breathe more slowly and deeply, you alert your body to the fact that you want it to behave differently. You are not just changing your breathing pattern, you are making a full-body announcement that you are entering into a different relationship with your mind and your body.

One visit with a child can supply us with enough creativity dust to last for a lifetime... Visit with children like you're the child you ought to be more often.

The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.

An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.

Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?

Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view... Make a spectacle of yourself.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.

The artist is a god, but he is also an idiot. That is the human way.

Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.

Our desire is to grow so quiet and to work so deeply that we participate fully in the mystery in which we're embedded. When we manage to do that we feel as if we have merged with the universe; for the duration of that experience we feel immortal.

A wild person with a calm mind can make anything.

The growth that an artist seeks is a fine combination of mastering craft, garnering an audience, maintaining one's mental health, and working mightily from a ever-expanding base of experience.

Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.

We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade.

A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.

Keenly aware of their limitations, artists often remain insecure even as their list of successes grows.

Live intensely and dangerously. The world may not depend on your efforts, but you do.

Talent is so loaded a word, so full to the brim with meanings, that an artist might be wise to forget about it altogether and just keep on working.

Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.

Artists know failure. It is not tragic that they know failure; it is only tragic if they know failure and little else.

Do I doubt the painting I've just painted because it is not right or because I can never like what I do?

The artist must reckon with his own character flaws, which do not disappear just because he has been called to be an artist.

To decide to reach for this blue and not that one, to switch styles or subject matter, to move, in the middle of a sentence, in one direction or another, to commit to this book when that one is also calling, are the sorts of choices that artists must make if they are to function.

Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.

Humanitarian convictions are the linchpins of our salvation, and these an artist must champion.

When you flow like water you bring all of your talents and resources to your creative work... Flow around every obstacle you encounter, including any you've erected yourself.

We can carve time out of thin air, or we can fill up even infinite stretches of time with nothingness. These are our choices.

An artist feels vulnerable to begin with; and yet the only answer is to recklessly discard more armour.

Revealing secrets can bring us pain or get us into trouble, but worse pain and worse trouble await us if we keep silent...Revealing secrets can bring us pain or get us into trouble, but worse pain and worse trouble await us if we keep silent… we become habitually untruthful. The door to our creativity closes. gr we become habitually untruthful. The door to our creativity closes.

While it may feel natural to devote yourself to your creative work and succumb to feelings of separation and alienation, it nevertheless isn't a terrific idea in terms of your overall happiness and health.

Even though we require flexibility to negotiate our changing circumstances, we are rather built to anxiously turn away from alternatives.

Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions.

If you bring your sexual impulses to your creative work... you'll be working from deep in the genetic code, down where life wants to make new life and feel good in the process.

An ability to choose is a necessity for the artist.

The artist can't paint, sing, or dance without emotion: if he does, he is a machine masquerading as a person.

While some part of the artwork may fail, the whole may have its own unique importance.

An artist... must actively caress wonder: for fascination, like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of living.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey.

An alive piece of art may be more alive than much of its audience, and with this odd truth artists must make peace.

There are an infinite number of rewards you could bestow on yourself for working at your creative projects, and you deserve every one of them.

No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.

I am one powerful self made up of so many selves that sometimes I throw myself a get-acquainted party.

The artist at her best - wild, passionate, rebellious, and human - is often too large and truthful a creature for society's taste. The artist at her most outlandish - profane, eccentric, even a little mad - is at least as disquieting a figure.

Let each of us dream of a community of artists and work to make that dream a reality.

Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?

Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.

I am a human being and an artist: I really, simply, surely am.

Go directly to work' means... when an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you answer it.

Dream, but expect nothing. Desire, but expect nothing. Hope, but expect nothing. Release your need to control and gain real control.

Hurray for criticism, if it means that an artist's voice is heard. Let the wise artist invite criticism and survive it when it comes.

The artist... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency; but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings.

Affirmations need to be used if they are to become incorporated into the fabric of your being.

It goes against an artist's grain to retire. But whether he retires or not, he will age... What work will get done in the remaining time? ...Can he find a little peace in this twilight? Or must he still rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end?

Boredom is the thing that regularly arrives between excitements and episodes of meaning: it is as natural as the tides, and in it an artist can drown.

It is the artist's job to revere beauty without being enchanted by it, to aim for it but also to aim for truth and goodness - just in case they, and not beauty, are the real things of value.

Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.

The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.

An artist's fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.

Make creativity your religion... because creating is soulful work.

The more sophisticated we become - as we pierce reality and see the void beyond - the more our sense of wonder is destroyed, along with our reasons for being.

If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you'll feel more exhausted than if you'd created for hours.

A time comes, after years in the trenches, when the artist begins to fathom what his career has looked like so far and what it will look like if he continues as he's proceeded.

When a thing is not done, continuing to work is the strength; but when it is done, the strength lies in stopping.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

Your chances of creating deeply hinge on the quality of your awareness state.

Whatever pain and suffering you've experienced in your life has been a blessing at least in this one regard: you now know some true things that you couldn't have learned any other way.

A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.

To create you must quiet your mind. You need a quiet mind so that ideas will have a chance of connecting.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.

By 'expecting nothing' you are not 'giving up.' Far from it! You are making a decision to focus on what needs to be done rather than on outcomes.

The strange, unbeautiful face beautiful in its ugliness; the perfect, beautiful face ugly in its perfection.

Artists have wild desires and a terrible hunger to achieve... Without it they haven't the juice for striving or loving. But desire also can make them greedy and turn dreams into unrealizable obsessions.

While artists fervently believe that the art marketplace was invented by the devil and remains in his henchman's hands, they have no choice but to carry long spoons and sup there.

It is in an artist's real interest to congratulate herself more often: not out of narcissism, but in her role as her own dear friend and advocate.

The artist who pictures sounds as colours, who feels the difference in microns between one sea green and another... is not attending to what the world considers important.

As the artist matures she is continuously shaken by what she manages to discover: by the earth shifting beneath her feet once again, by her own amazed, ringing laughter.

Chaos is everywhere - and artists, to fashion art and live truthfully, have no choice but to invite this unwanted guest right into the studio.

A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.

The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.

Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.

The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression.

It is the job of each artist to believe in the possibility of meaningful, substantial, and sustainable change.

The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society.

If you create you will also wait, and while you're waiting you will want to be patient but not idle... responses from the world often take a long time.