Eric Maisel Quotes
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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.
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Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.
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Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.
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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?
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The strange, unbeautiful face beautiful in its ugliness; the perfect, beautiful face ugly in its perfection.
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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.
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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.
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Do I doubt the painting I've just painted because it is not right or because I can never like what I do?
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Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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An artist feels vulnerable to begin with; and yet the only answer is to recklessly discard more armour.
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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.
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The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.
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The artist can't paint, sing, or dance without emotion: if he does, he is a machine masquerading as a person.