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.

Eric Maisel

Categorized in : Moving Book Artist

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

Eric Maisel

life-is-too-short helping-others brother

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

Eric Maisel

real dream desire

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

encounters creative water

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.

Eric Maisel

anxiety self thinking

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.

Eric Maisel

breathing mind relationship

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

Eric Maisel

experience enough art

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.

Eric Maisel

swings mistake might

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.

Eric Maisel

creating artist inspiration

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.

Eric Maisel

duration desire quiet

Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.

Eric Maisel

creativity eternity humanity

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.

Eric Maisel

creativity dust children

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.

Eric Maisel

rewards creative numbers

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.

Eric Maisel

artist wise might

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

Eric Maisel

brilliant persons beautiful

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

Eric Maisel

losing-yourself mystery vision

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.

Eric Maisel

ideas art moving

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.

Eric Maisel

creativity artist self

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

Eric Maisel

change meaningful jobs

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

Eric Maisel

silence mind ideas

All space is space in which to create.

Eric Maisel

space