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A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.
Eric Maisel -
The artist must reckon with his own character flaws, which do not disappear just because he has been called to be an artist.
Eric Maisel
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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.
Eric Maisel -
The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.
Eric Maisel -
An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.
Eric Maisel -
An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.
Eric Maisel
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The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.
Eric Maisel -
Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
The artist is a god, but he is also an idiot. That is the human way.
Eric Maisel -
Art is manipulation, the management of material, the directing of fate... Who does that directing?
Eric Maisel
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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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.
Eric Maisel
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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.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel -
Rekindling hope, engaging in inner work, and venturing into the world amount to a complete plan for picking yourself up when you're down.
Eric Maisel -
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.
Eric Maisel