Rick Rubin

From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

A Way of Being

The Creative Act

Anton Sten

Our thoughts, feelings, processes, and unconscious beliefs have an energy that is hidden in the work. This unseen, unmeasurable force gives each piece its magnetism. A completed project is only made up of our intention and our experiments around it. Remove intention and all that's left is the ornamental shell.

Though the artist may have a number of goals and moti-vations, there is only one intention. This is the grand gesture of the work.

Claudine

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam. What you make doesn’t have to be witnessed, recorded, sold, or encased in glass for it to be a work of art. Through the ordinary state of being, we’re already creators in the most profound way, creating our experience of reality and composing the world we perceive.

Sachi

Randomly flipped to this page and eyes settled on this passage after reading the “Look for Clues” chapter. So relevant. 

Piper Loyd

A child has no set of premises it relies on to make sense of the world. lt may serve you to do the same. Any label you a ssume before sitting doWn to create, even one as founda- tional as sculptor, rapper, author, or entrepreneur, could be doing more harm than good. Strip away the labels. Now how do you see the world? 

julien thibeaut

No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.

Fred Rivett

You exist as a creative being in a creative universe. A singular work of art.

Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art.

If you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it's not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea's time has come.

If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

The world of reason can be narrow and filled with dead ends, while a spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities. The unseen world is boundless.

Ali Angco

Faith is rewarded, perhaps even more than talent or ability. After all, how can we offer the art what it needs without blind trust? We are required to believe in something that doesn't exist in order to allow it to come into being.

The Creative Act quotes

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