God does not give us more than we can handle,” I am told but I wonder if God doesn’t overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
And why are we supposed to be serious about God? Did God show up and crack the whip? “You there, Annie in Ohio, I see you laughing a lot and frankly it really pisses Me off . . . “ (50)
Sometimes the dying live more fiercely and wisely than the rest of us. (146)
Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.
We will experience the life we have the faith to experience.
Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.
We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don’t.
Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.
No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness
Far from making me feel different and special, my [spiritual] experiences made me feel the same, ordinary, and interconnected. If I felt more spiritual, everyone else felt more spiritual as well. (276)
Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite — getting something down.
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.
Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets.
Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.
Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.
Working with the morning pages, we begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display.
Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.
Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
Procrastination is not Laziness”, I tell him. “It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.
It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth.
Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.
When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.
A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.
Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.
The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a by-product of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous by-product.
The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you’ve already got.
When we write from the inside out rather than the outside in, when we write about what most concerns us rather than about what we feel might sell, we often write so well and so persuasively that the market responds to our efforts.
I do not put in long hours at the keys – or very seldom. Instead, I snatch time. I write in the crannies of my life.
When we make time to write, we can do it anytime, anywhere.
I believe that what we want to write wants to be written
Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.
Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, ‘You’re enough.
If we are interested in a writing life – as opposed to a writing career – then we are in it for the process and not the product – for the body of work and not for the quick hit of one well-realised piece.
Artists and intellectuals are not he same animal. This causes a great deal of confusion. Our schools teach educate us intellectually but not artistically. We learn to deconstruct art, not construct it.
There is a path for each of us. When we are on our right path, we have a surefootedness. We know the next right action―Although not necessarily what is just around the bend.
We go into parenting, and we discover that we don’t have the answers. We are at a loss.
Creativity is always a leap of faith. You’re faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.
Art used to be made in the name of faith. We made cathedrals, we made stained-glass windows, we made murals.
Technology teaches passivity. Absorbed in our devices – at any age – we are absorbed in someone else’s perspective.
When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, ‘I’m not old enough. I’m not distinguished enough.’ But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.