Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear

I refuse to take on additional jobs, such as trying to police what anybody thinks about my work once it leaves my desk.

It means we still have enough space left in our civilization for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion—and even total frivolousness.

you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.

Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something

I bought index cards—my preferred method of keeping track of notes—and I allowed myself to begin dreaming of this new world.

So the question is not so much “What are you passionate about?” The question is “What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?”

we are meant to engage with inspiration, and that inspiration wants to work with us—then

The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: “My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely).”

working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile. You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point.