“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

“In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.”

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

“Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.”

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"

Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.”

“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.”

“Serious art is born from serious play.”

“Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness”

“Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.”

“Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

“Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.”

“Art is born in attention.”

“In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do—spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.”

“We've all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.”

“Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.”

“The trick is to metabolize pain as energy. Learn, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: "What next?" instead of "Why me?”

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”

“We always do the best we can by the light we have to see by.”

“All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.”

“Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.”

“The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ANAÏS NIN”

“The reward for attention is always healing.”

“Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.”

“Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth. Without this creative moistening, we may remain barren. We must allow the bolt of pain to strike us. Remember, this is useful pain; lightning illuminates.”

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. SENECA”

“The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.”

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. MARGARET YOUNG”

“Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, ‘You’re enough.”

“AN ARTIST’S PRAYER

O Great Creator,

We are gathered together in your name

That we may be of greater service to you

And to our fellows.

We offer ourselves to you as instruments.

We open ourselves to your creativity in our lives.

We surrender to you our old ideas.

We welcome your new and more expansive ideas.

We trust that you will lead us.

We trust that it is safe to follow you.

We know you created us and that creativity

Is your nature and our own.

We ask you to unfold our lives

According to your plan, not our low self-worth.

Help us to believe that it is not too late

And that we are not too small or too flawed

To be healed—

By you and through each other—and made whole.

Help us to love one another,

To nurture each other’s unfolding,

To encourage each other’s growth,

And understand each other’s fears.

Help us to know that we are not alone,

That we are loved and lovable.

Help us to create as an act of worship to you.”

“the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.”

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.”

“When people do not want to see something, they get mad at the one who shows them.”

“People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined. As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.”

“There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path.”

“as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art.”

“always remember that your Censor’s negative opinions are not the truth.”