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

There’s probably never going to be any such thing in your life or mine as “an arts emergency.” That being the case, why not make art?

Over the years, Tom Waits finally found his sense of permission to deal with his creativity more lightly—without so much drama, without so much fear. A lot of this lightness, Waits said, came from watching his children grow up and seeing their total freedom of creative expression. He noticed that his children felt fully entitled to make up songs al

I also want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life that I can. I don’t just mean physically; I mean emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.

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

Look, if you can manage to live comfortably off your inspiration forever, that’s fantastic. That’s everyone’s dream, right? But don’t let that dream turn into a nightmare. Financial demands can put so much pressure on the delicacies and vagaries of inspiration. You must be smart about providing for yourself. To claim that you are too creative to th

we must be wary of the lure of the Tormented Artist, because sometimes it’s a persona—a role that people grow accustomed to playing. It can be a seductively picturesque role, too, with a certain dark and romantic glamour to it. And it comes with an extremely useful side benefit—namely, built-in permission for terrible behavior.

I think it’s a mighty act of human love to remind somebody that they can accomplish things by themselves, and that the world does not automatically owe them any reward, and that they are not as weak and hobbled as they may believe.

(Nature provides the seed; man provides the garden; each is grateful for the other’s help.)

simple entitlement to exist, and therefore to express yourself—is the only weapon with which to combat the nasty dialogue that may automatically arise within your head