Top 90 Eric Maisel Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “That as a smart person, whose brain races faster and harder than the next person’s, you can’t accomplish something like stopping your racing mind from worrying doesn’t mean that you have a disorder or that you are a failure.”

— Eric Maisel

53. “Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.”

— Eric Maisel

54. “The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.”

— Eric Maisel

55. “We see how boredom arises as a special, terrible problem for smart people. A smart person has a lively brain; that brain wants to work; it is primed to think; and if you give it nothing to do, it will do nothing for as long as it can bear to do nothing, but it will not be happy. It will be bored and, worse, begin to doubt the meaningfulness of life.”

— Eric Maisel

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “The artist’s personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression.”

— Eric Maisel

61. “Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.”

— Eric Maisel

62. “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

63. “Artists disbelieve and dispute society’s most cherished notions.”

— Eric Maisel

64. “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

65. “Your chances of creating deeply hinge on the quality of your awareness state.”

— Eric Maisel

66. “You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There’s good sweat and there’s bad sweat.”

— Eric Maisel

67. “The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.”

— Eric Maisel

68. “When a thing is not done, continuing to work is the strength; but when it is done, the strength lies in stopping.”

— Eric Maisel

69. “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

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

— Eric Maisel

71. “But at heart what we are talking about is not pathology but an intense conflictual knowing, a knowing that we are worthy smacking up against a knowing that we are just passing through: a knowing, that is, that we matter and that we do not matter. This is a true and not a pathological understanding. Every smart person possesses this understanding and can’t help but feel distressed by this understanding.”

— Eric Maisel

72. “A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.”

— Eric Maisel

73. “Meaning is primarily a subjective psychological experience. A smart person is more likely than the next person to be aware of its absence and to be affected by its absence. He is more likely to get bored, to experience meaninglessness, to begin to see the extent to which neither his society nor the universe are built to satisfy his meaning needs, and to then hunt for soothing or exciting meaning substitutes that ultimately reduce his freedom. Meaning is a smart person’s most difficult challenge.”

— Eric Maisel

74. “Isn’t today a day to devote to craft? Isn’t tomorrow? Isn’t every day, routinely, until the end of time?”

— Eric Maisel

75. “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

76. “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

77. “Even though we require flexibility to negotiate our changing circumstances, we are rather built to anxiously turn away from alternatives.”

— Eric Maisel

78. “An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe – and achieve some important successes...”

— Eric Maisel

79. “The primary challenge that smart people must deal with is making sense of meaning. Natural psychology suggests that the best answer to this problem is donning the mantle of meaning-maker and engaging in value-based meaning-making. No smart person is immune to this problem. In fact, it is the most significant emotional issue for our smartest 15 percent.”

— Eric Maisel

80. “Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.”

— Eric Maisel

81. “While some part of the artwork may fail, the whole may have its own unique importance.”

— Eric Maisel

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “Affirmations need to be used if they are to become incorporated into the fabric of your being.”

— Eric Maisel

86. “An artist’s fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.”

— Eric Maisel

87. “Let each of us dream of a community of artists and work to make that dream a reality.”

— Eric Maisel

88. “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

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

— Eric Maisel

90. “It is the job of each artist to believe in the possibility of meaningful, substantial, and sustainable change.”

— Eric Maisel

91. “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

92. “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

93. “Humanitarian convictions are the linchpins of our salvation, and these an artist must champion.”

— Eric Maisel

94. “Artists know failure. It is not tragic that they know failure; it is only tragic if they know failure and little else...”

— Eric Maisel