Eric Maisel Quotes & Sayings

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

Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity. — Eric Maisel

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? — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

Except under dire circumstances or as a day job to support creative endeavors, a smart person is not so likely to want to wait tables, file forms, work on an assembly line, or sell shoes. It isn't that he disparages these lines of work as beneath his dignity; rather, it is that he can see clearly how his days would be experienced as meaningless if he had to spend his time not thinking. — Eric Maisel

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

If there is a soul, then it is a mistake to think that it is given to us completely created. It is created right here for a lifetime. Life is nothing but a long, painful process of creation. — Eric Maisel

We are the sort of creature who not only needs to put up firewood and food for the winter but who must also predict the distant future, make decisions about who or what created the universe and what sort of principles and path we should follow, deal with our fellow difficult and dangerous creatures, and in other ways make sense of things that would overtax any creature. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

Write, even if you have a twinge, a doubt, a fear, a block, a noisy neighbor, a sick cat, thirteen unpublished stories, and a painful boil. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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 is the gift that keeps on giving. — Eric Maisel

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

The song you write may be beautiful, the research you conceive may be beautiful, but you are the real beauty in life. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

Make creativity your religion ... because creating is soulful work. — Eric Maisel

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

An essential aspect of self-support is to remind yourself that success is not measurable, but a matter of feeling. — Eric Maisel

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

The result may be important but it's not the actual measure. The measure is the feeling you have made contact with something. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

A wild person with a calm mind can make anything. — Eric Maisel

Both the biological and psychological approaches are suspect since both posit an unreal world, completely at odds with human experience, in which people do not get depressed for good reasons having to do with their experience in life and their uneasiness about the facts of existence. Rather, people only get depressed because something in them is flawed or broken. Depression of any magnitude, these approaches claim, is always an illness and never a reaction to being dropped, willy-nilly, into a world not of their making, which they are forced to make mean something. — Eric Maisel

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

A smart person is even more likely to suppose that his brain is equal to the challenges he faces, even such frankly impossible ones. What a setup to send your brain racing! And what will it do when, racing, it realizes the magnitude of its challenges and the extent to which they can't be solved just by thinking? It will worry. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An ability to choose is a necessity for the artist. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you wait for a better time to create, better than this very moment, if you wait until you feel settled, divinely inspired, perfectly centered, unburdened of your usual worries, or free of your own skin, forget about it. You will still be waiting tomorrow and the next day, wondering why you never managed to begin, wondering — Eric Maisel

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

Because of our fear that we are merely excited matter and the consequent grudge that we hold against the universe, we feel lost and alienated, like a refugee far from home in a universe that cares nothing for us. — Eric Maisel

All space is space in which to create. — Eric Maisel

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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

Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions. — Eric Maisel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Eric Maisel

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

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? — Eric Maisel

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. — Eric Maisel