Hugh MacLeod Quotes

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.

THE SEX & CASH THEORY - The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.

Have a story. And make sure it’s a good one. A DAMN good one.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring.

Boring' can be a lot of fun. Especially if it's on your own terms.

GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS. THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.

If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

The hunger will give you everything and it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. But knowing this, of course, is what ultimately sets you free.

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kidergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take te crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on agebra, history, ect. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please.

You do not own the molecules. They are stardust. They belong to God. What you do own is your soul. Nobody can take that away from you.

The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me.

When your dreams becoming reality, they're no longer your dreams.

But Andrew was right about one thing. Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it's the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not simply nice things to have; they are essential survival tools.
And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important as the stories we tell other people.

YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOUR IDEA IS ANY GOOD the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is
not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us — because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.