Eric Maisel Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Rekindling hope, engaging in inner work, and venturing into the world amount to a complete plan for picking yourself up when you're down.
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A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Dream, but expect nothing. Desire, but expect nothing. Hope, but expect nothing. Release your need to control and gain real control.
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Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.
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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.
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Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.
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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.
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An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.
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An artist... must actively caress wonder: for fascination, like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of living.
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Even though we require flexibility to negotiate our changing circumstances, we are rather built to anxiously turn away from alternatives.
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An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.
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Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art is manipulation, the management of material, the directing of fate... Who does that directing?
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A wild person with a calm mind can make anything.