Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Eric Maisel

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.

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.

Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?

Creativity is part sweat - not just beads of it, but sometimes buckets.

The artist... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency; but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings.

Dream, but expect nothing. Desire, but expect nothing. Hope, but expect nothing. Release your need to control and gain real control.

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.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey.

Rekindling hope, engaging in inner work, and venturing into the world amount to a complete plan for picking yourself up when you're down.

An artist... must actively caress wonder: for fascination, like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of living.

I am one powerful self made up of so many selves that sometimes I throw myself a get-acquainted party.

Our desire is to grow so quiet and to work so deeply that we participate fully in the mystery in which we're embedded. When we manage to do that we feel as if we have merged with the universe; for the duration of that experience we feel immortal.

Even though we require flexibility to negotiate our changing circumstances, we are rather built to anxiously turn away from alternatives.

The artist is a god, but he is also an idiot. That is the human way.

When a thing is not done, continuing to work is the strength; but when it is done, the strength lies in stopping.

It is the job of each artist to believe in the possibility of meaningful, substantial, and sustainable change.

An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.

A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio.

Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.

One visit with a child can supply us with enough creativity dust to last for a lifetime... Visit with children like you're the child you ought to be more often.

Let each of us dream of a community of artists and work to make that dream a reality.

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.

To create you must quiet your mind. You need a quiet mind so that ideas will have a chance of connecting.

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.

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.

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.

I am a human being and an artist: I really, simply, surely am.

When the artist activates his being, awakens to his surroundings, and sets himself the task of creating, connections are made out of conscious awareness that return coalesced as inspiration.

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.

An ability to choose is a necessity for the artist.

Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.

Your chances of creating deeply hinge on the quality of your awareness state.

Artists know failure. It is not tragic that they know failure; it is only tragic if they know failure and little else.

Almost nothing beautiful or brilliant happens unless a person has thought about it a lot.

A wild person with a calm mind can make anything.

The growth that an artist seeks is a fine combination of mastering craft, garnering an audience, maintaining one's mental health, and working mightily from a ever-expanding base of experience.

The more sophisticated we become - as we pierce reality and see the void beyond - the more our sense of wonder is destroyed, along with our reasons for being.

Live intensely and dangerously. The world may not depend on your efforts, but you do.

Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.

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.

Humanitarian convictions are the linchpins of our salvation, and these an artist must champion.

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.

The artist must reckon with his own character flaws, which do not disappear just because he has been called to be an artist.

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.

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.

We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade.

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.

The artist can't paint, sing, or dance without emotion: if he does, he is a machine masquerading as a person.

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.

An artist feels vulnerable to begin with; and yet the only answer is to recklessly discard more armour.

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.

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.

All space is space in which to create.

Settle into mystery as you would settle into your most comfortable chair. Listen. Have visions. Lose yourself.

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.

Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.

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.

Chaos is everywhere - and artists, to fashion art and live truthfully, have no choice but to invite this unwanted guest right into the studio.

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.

The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.