If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.
The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best – write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:.
Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.
Unless you are actually a ninja, a guru, or a rock star, don’t ever use any of those terms in your bio. Ever.
We found the future, like birds fly into windows.
Every artist gets asked the question, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ The honest artist answers, ‘I steal them.’
If I’d waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started “being creative,” well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.
Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.
What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
The best way to get started on the path of sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.
Show your work, and when the right people show up, pay close attention to them, because they’ll have a lot to show you.
Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.
There’s an intuition learned through our work. Teaching others doesn’t mean they can just go out and replicate it.
It’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.
The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
Marriage is two people in love standing in the same bathroom.
In order to be found, you have to be findable.
You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, ‘We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.’
Art that only comes from the head isn’t any good. Watch any good musician and you’ll see what I mean.