Eric Maisel famous quotes

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

#Brother #Life Is Too Short #Helping Others

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

#Dream #Real #Desire

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

#Numbers #Creative #Rewards

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

#Children #Creativity #Dust

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

#Art #Experience #Enough

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

#Wise #Artist #Might

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

#Beautiful #Brilliant #Persons

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Powerful #Artist #Journey

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Real #Writing #Space

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Giving Up #Focus #Decision

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

#Relationship #Breathing #Mind

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

#Keys #Long #Centering

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Encouragement #Real #Artist

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Feel Good #Creative #Want

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

#Thinking #Self #Anxiety

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

#Failure #Artist #Littles

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

#Alternatives #Circumstances #Turns

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

#Fear #Block #Dark

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

#Artist #Doe #Machines

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

#Artist #Self #Ego

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

#Artist #Ego #Humans

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

#Doubt #Painting #Because I Can

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

#Being Alone #Artist #Solitude

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

#Depression #Strong #Artist

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

#Effort #World #May

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Wise #Mean #Artist

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

#Water #Creative #Flow

Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.
-- Eric Maisel

#Friendship #Artist #Careless

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Artist #Growth #Maintaining

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Patience #Long #Waiting

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

#Vision #Mystery #Losing Yourself

No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.
-- Eric Maisel

#Artist #Muse #Darts

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

#Two #Half #Way

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

#Insecure #Artist #Lists

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Dream #Real #Loss

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

#Hurt #Heart #Deconstruction

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

#Inspiration #Artist #Creating

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

#Unique #May #Failing

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

#Desire #Duration #Mystery

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

#Art #Moving #Ideas

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

#Artist #Humanity #Way

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

#Artist #Champion #Humanity

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

#Hope #World #Pick Yourself Up

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Health #Ideas #Creative

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.
-- Eric Maisel

#Wall #Creativity #Anxiety

Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.
-- Eric Maisel

#Creativity #Giving