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.

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

believe hands art

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.

Eric Maisel

artist sky blue

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

flaws artist character

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

Eric Maisel

business rooms art

As the artist matures she is continuously shaken by what she

Eric Maisel

laughter artist feet

An ability to choose is a necessity for the artist.

Eric Maisel

ability choices artist

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

Eric Maisel

important artist struggle

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

boredom tides artist

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

real dream loss

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

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

anxiety wall creativity

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

space real writing

No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.

Eric Maisel

darts muse artist

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

Eric Maisel

deconstruction hurt heart

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

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

Eric Maisel

insecure lists artist

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

Eric Maisel

infinite choices air

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

waiting patience long

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.

Eric Maisel

pain suffering blessing

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

kissing views people