Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Eric Maisel - Page 2

Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view... Make a spectacle of yourself.

An alive piece of art may be more alive than much of its audience, and with this odd truth artists must make peace.

Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.

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.

Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions.

A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.

We can carve time out of thin air, or we can fill up even infinite stretches of time with nothingness. These are our choices.

Go directly to work' means... when an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you answer it.

You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.

Who knows how many artists fail because the light that shines through them is defracted in a thousand directions and not concentrated in a single beam?

Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.

Keenly aware of their limitations, artists often remain insecure even as their list of successes grows.

The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.

As the artist matures she is continuously shaken by what she manages to discover: by the earth shifting beneath her feet once again, by her own amazed, ringing laughter.

The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression.

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.

It goes against an artist's grain to retire. But whether he retires or not, he will age... What work will get done in the remaining time? ...Can he find a little peace in this twilight? Or must he still rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end?

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.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

Do I doubt the painting I've just painted because it is not right or because I can never like what I do?

The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.

The artist dreams of works of real breadth; but, limited by his personality and the nature of his medium, limited by inner disturbances and loss of purpose, he often works more narrowly than he'd intended.

Artists have wild desires and a terrible hunger to achieve... Without it they haven't the juice for striving or loving. But desire also can make them greedy and turn dreams into unrealizable obsessions.

Art is manipulation, the management of material, the directing of fate... Who does that directing?

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round.

Affirmations need to be used if they are to become incorporated into the fabric of your being.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.

The strange, unbeautiful face beautiful in its ugliness; the perfect, beautiful face ugly in its perfection.

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.

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.

Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?

Affirmations are not bound up in rules. An affirmation can be long or short, poetic or plain. If you love a phrase and find that it helps you, that is a valid affirmation.

A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.

Make creativity your religion... because creating is soulful work.

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.

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.

While artists fervently believe that the art marketplace was invented by the devil and remains in his henchman's hands, they have no choice but to carry long spoons and sup there.

Revealing secrets can bring us pain or get us into trouble, but worse pain and worse trouble await us if we keep silent...Revealing secrets can bring us pain or get us into trouble, but worse pain and worse trouble await us if we keep silent? we become habitually untruthful. The door to our creativity closes. gr we become habitually untruthful. The door to our creativity closes.

An artist's fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.

An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.

While some part of the artwork may fail, the whole may have its own unique importance.

Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.

A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.

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.

Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.