Rick Rubin Quotes

Though we can’t change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our ability to notice.

With unshakable faith, we work under the assumption that the problem is already solved. The answer is out there, perhaps it’s obvious. We just haven’t come across it yet.

We tend to believe that the more we know, the more clearly we can see the possibilities available. This is not the case. The impossible only becomes accessible when experience has not taught us limits. Did the computer win because it knew more than the grandmaster or because it knew less? There’s a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it’s too difficult, it’s not worth the effort, it’s not the way things are done, it’s not likely to work, or it’s not likely to work for us.

Expressing oneself in the world and creativity are the same. It may not be possible to know who you are without somehow expressing it.

There doesn’t need to be a purpose guiding what we choose to make.

Approaching the practical aspects of your day with military precision allows the artistic windows to be opened in childlike freedom.

Sharing art is the price of making it. Exposing your vulnerability is the fee.

Art is a circulation of energetic ideas. What makes them appear new is that they’re combining differently each time they come back.

Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.

The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

Whatever you choose, it’s helpful to have fellow travelers around you. They don’t have to be like you, just like-minded in some way. Creativity is contagious. When we spend time with other artistic people, we absorb and exchange a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. This group can be called a Sangha. Each person in this relationship begins seeing with a different imaginative eye.

Releasing a work into the world becomes easier when we remember that each piece can never be a total reflection of us, only a reflection of who we are in this moment.

Formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response, or defending our position or attacking another’s. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all.

Our definition of self-awareness as artists relates directly to the way we tune in to our inner experience, not the way we are externally perceived. The more we identify with our self as it exists through the eyes of others, the more disconnected we become and the less energy we have to draw from.

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.