The Real Creative Journey

"The creative journey is not one in which you’re crowned the triumphant hero and live happily ever after. The real creative journey is one in which you wake up every day, like Phil, with more work to do."

-- Austin Kleon

A Thought Produces Thing

"There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interstices of the universe. A thought, in this substance, Produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created."

--  Wallace D. Wattles

The Journey Is Life and Experience

"Cervantes wrote: “The journey is better than the inn.” It’s good to rest at the inn after a long journey, just as it’s good for our ship to tie up at a dock for a few days’ rest after a long sea voyage. But Cervantes was certainly right—the journey is better than the inn. The journey is life and experience; it puts us in the way of new interests and the most astonishing synchronicity."

-- Earl Nightingale

The basic principle of winning

"The basic principle of winning has never changed.  It’s about taking the potential you were born with, living up to it, and helping other people at the same time as you realize your own dreams. As a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). You become what you think about most of the time. Thoughts become things."

-- Denis Waitley

Get A Little Closer To Where You Want To Go

"Whenever life gets overwhelming, go back to chapter one of this book and think about your days. Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing. Worry less about being a great artist. Worry more about being a good human being who makes art. Worry less about making a mark. Worry more about leaving things better than you found them."

-- Austin Kleon

Many Of Us Are Running From Things

"Every day when he came home from school, there was a neighborhood dog that would start to bark wildly and chase him. Every single day, at the same block, he would be running scared trying to escape that dog. Finally, he just got tired of the chasing and the running and said, ‘Next time I’m going to find a brick and bust that dog in the head.’ “The next day he was walking home, minding his own business, and sure enough, the dog started barking and chasing him. He started running as usual, and then he saw a brick. He stopped, picked it up and turned around. As the dog got closer, he realized it didn’t have any teeth. He just put down the brick and said, ‘Get out of here,’ as the dog whimpered away. All our lives, many of us are running from things that don’t have any teeth to do us harm.”

-- Larry D Angelo

Don't Deny Your Mind and Soul

"We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body and denying both mind and soul; and we see that real life means the complete expression of all that man can give forth through body, mind, and soul. Whatever he can say, no man can be really happy or satisfied unless his body is living fully in every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility, or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance."

--  Wallace D. Wattles

Each Goal Successfully Reached

"That’s the way goal-oriented people spend their lives. Each goal, successfully reached, finds them better equipped, with more experience, to set the next goal. Goals for such people tend to ascend in stair-like fashion, each one a bit more demanding and fulfilling than the one before. In a few years they find themselves accomplishing, with surprising ease, goals that would have been impossible for them when they first began their journey into meaning."

-- Earl Nightingale

The Only Thing You Can Control

"We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it. It might seem like a stretch, but I really think the best thing you can do if you want to make art is to pretend you’re starring in your own remake of Groundhog Day: Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it."

-- Austin Kleon

You Are Only Responsible For Your Work

"You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO . . . Try to do some BAD work—the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell—you are not responsible for the world—you are only responsible for your work—so DO IT."

-- Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse