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Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
The enemy is a very good teacher. —the Dalai Lama
Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work.
We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals.
The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it.
Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.
The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
Pinochio on his way to pleasure island.
CRITICISM
Resistance is the source of the energy fueling the criticism of the autocrat and the self-criticism of the avoidant
Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
The treasure we seek is found where we least wish to look.
The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.
Any support we get from persons of flesh and blood is like Monopoly money; it’s not legal tender in that sphere where we have to do our work.
It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. —Telamon of Arcadia,
any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much.
ye’ve got t’ play th’ wind now, don’t ye?”
technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
We make our luck.
The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art.
we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.
vented his anger quickly with a look, then recomposed himself and returned to the task at hand.
Release the anger and be able to complete the task. Swallow it, push it down or hold it in some way and it continues to fire and percolates with thoughts that mean one stuggles to complete the task.
The capacity to complete the task is an indicator of ones possible capacity to release the frustration.
Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious.
That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.
The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
The criticism identifies what was or wasn't done. These are ways to measure and reinforce failure and a sense of being one.
Critique identifies what may yet be done. This is based on verbs and assumes ones capacity to continue to grow.
the boss goes over what assignments each team member is responsible for in the coming week. When the meeting breaks up, an assistant prepares a work sheet and distributes it. When this hits your desk an hour later, you know exactly what you have to do that week.
Resistance is a bully. Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it.
The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is.
the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
important? Because when we sit down day after day and keep
What I call Professionalism someone else might call the Artist’s Code or the Warrior’s Way. It’s an attitude of egolessness and service.
I admire particularly the warning against the second crime, to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun. That’s the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”
They’re on the other side of a pane of glass, shouting to get our attention. But we can’t hear them. We’re too distracted by our own nonsense.
Eternity, as Blake might have told us, has opened a portal into time. And we’re it.
The Ego hates artists because they are the pathfinders and bearers of the future, because each one dares, in James Joyce’s phrase, to “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,
When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.
The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators.
it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.
Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.”
Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor,
Act and do for me.
2025: god/God as the highest (value, virtue, ideal, etc)
we are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
