Eric Maisel Quotes
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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.
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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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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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An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.
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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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Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.
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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.
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Settle into mystery as you would settle into your most comfortable chair. Listen. Have visions. Lose yourself.
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The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.
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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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You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.
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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 must reckon with his own character flaws, which do not disappear just because he has been called to be an artist.
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Chaos is everywhere - and artists, to fashion art and live truthfully, have no choice but to invite this unwanted guest right into the studio.
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Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey.
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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.
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The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.
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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.
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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.
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Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?
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The artist is a god, but he is also an idiot. That is the human way.
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Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view... Make a spectacle of yourself.
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The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.
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Go directly to work' means... when an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you answer it.