What you want is to cultivate...

What you want is to cultivate quite the opposite: You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass. - P166

The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: "So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun." - P166

You can hear him working through all the same questions that we all must work through in our lives: Why am I here? What have I been called to do? How am I getting in my own way? How can I best live out my destiny? - P170

Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind). - P171

("If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is within you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you."—Gospel of Thomas.) - P172

[오늘의 한문장] Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

"Fake it till you make it" is the trick. - P164

You know how people who are h...

You know how people who are having extramarital affairs always seem to manage to find time to see each other in order to have wild, transgressive sex? - P160

Don’t think of it all as burdensome; think of it all as sexy. - P161

Because that’s how much I lov...

Because that’s how much I loved the work: I would even eat somebody else’s shit sandwich if it meant that I got to spend more time writing. - P151

(While it’s lovely to be childlike in your pursuit of creativity, in other words, it’s dangerous to be childish.) - P153

You can always make your art on the side of your bread-and-butter job. - P155

The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust—and those elements are universally accessible. - P158

So when can you start pursuin...

So when can you start pursuing your most creative and passionate life? You can start whenever you decide to start. - P146

After many years of practice, Heaney explained, "the chain draws unexpectedly tight and you have dipped into waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself." - P147