Rating: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Comments: This is a fascinating book, which has several insights not just on creating great art, but on creating a great life. It’s a very interesting read for anyone who’s in the creative field. I read it in January 2007, still refer to quotes from it, and highly recommend it.

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From the book:

Avoid attempting to fill in the spaces with theory, speculation, or plausible conjecture. This will enable you to create on a level of competence that would otherwise evade you. You may feel uncomfortable with unresolved tensions or unanswered questions. You may detest loose ends. But if you attempt to feel better about it all by inventing explanations, you may distort reality and put yourself at a definite disadvantage.

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Can’t we accept the possibility that some things will never be within our reach of understanding, even if perhaps they are within our ability to experience?

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If something is truly inevitable, it will happen with or without your consent.

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Perhaps what is universal among great creators is that they came by their traits honestly. Whatever traits they have are natural to them. It is not something they took on for the sake of their accomplishment.

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The best time to move ahead is just before you are ready to move ahead.

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Maybe it should be some other way, but it isn’t. It is the way it is, no matter how convincing you are that it shouldn’t be. Your logic can be impeccable, but reality will not be convinced by your arguments and suddenly change. And it will be hard for you to deal with reality if you are busy bemoaning the fact that things didn’t turn out the way they should have.

Current reality is what it is. Period.

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You are better off knowing what you want, even if you can’t have it.

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All this will not be accomplished during the first one hundred days, nor the first one thousand days, nor during the life of this administration, nor, perhaps, during our life on this planet. But let us begin.

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Insisting that life is one way, or the universe is one way, will hamper your relationship to the real world, in the same way you would have trouble relating to the world if you insisted there is only one language in it.