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

Eric Maisel

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Eric Maisel
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 14
Author
Playwright
Psychologist
Teacher
The Bronx
New York City
Idiot
Humanity
Artist
Also
Human
Humans
Way

More quotes by Eric Maisel

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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
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A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.
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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
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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
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Artists know failure. It is not tragic that they know failure it is only tragic if they know failure and little else.
Eric Maisel
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Make creativity your religion... because creating is soulful work.
Eric Maisel
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.
Eric Maisel
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When a thing is not done, continuing to work is the strength but when it is done, the strength lies in stopping.
Eric Maisel
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A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.
Eric Maisel
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The artist who pictures sounds as colours, who feels the difference in microns between one sea green and another... is not attending to what the world considers important.
Eric Maisel
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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