You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.

Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.

To create you must quiet your mind. You need a quiet mind so that ideas will have a chance of connecting.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.