Eric Maisel Quotes
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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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A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.
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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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The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.
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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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Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.
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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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An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.
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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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Keenly aware of their limitations, artists often remain insecure even as their list of successes grows.
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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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Even though we require flexibility to negotiate our changing circumstances, we are rather built to anxiously turn away from alternatives.
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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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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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Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.
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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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Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?