Rick Rubin Quotes

For those called to art who do struggle with an overwhelming sensitivity, the creative process can have a therapeutic power. It offers a sense of deep connection.

There’s a reason we are drawn to gazing at the ocean. It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror.

worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, “I don’t know if my song is as good as it can be.” Doubting yourself might sound like, “I can’t write a good song.” These statements are worlds apart, both in accuracy and in impact on the nervous system. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. All or nothing thinking is a nonstarter. However, doubting the quality of your work might, at times, help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. If you have an imperfect version of a work you really love, you may find that when it finally seems perfect, you don’t love it in the same way. This is a sign the imperfect version was actually the one. The work is not about perfection.

Being an artist means to be continually asking, “How can it be better?” whatever it is. It may be your art, and it may be your life.

Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply.

Tomorrow presents another opportunity for awareness, but it’s never an opportunity for the same awareness.

Gratitude can also help. Realizing you are fortunate to be in a position that allows you to create, and in some cases get paid to do what you love, might tip the balance in favor of the work.

You could say it’s a feeling. An inner voice. A silent whisper that makes you laugh. An energy that enters the room and possesses the body. Call it joy, awe, or elation. When a sense of harmony and fulfillment suddenly prevails. It is an arising of the ecstatic. The ecstatic is our compass, pointing to our true north. It arises genuinely in the process of creation. You’re working and struggling, and suddenly you notice a shift. A revelation. A small tweak is made, a new angle is revealed, and it takes your breath away. It can arise from even the most seemingly mundane detail. The change of a word in a sentence. Instantly, the passage morphs from nonsense to poetry, and everything falls into place.

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.

remaining too long in this phase, many pitfalls may arise. One is disconnection. If an artist is creating a beautiful work, and keeps endlessly crafting it beyond the need, sometimes they suddenly want to start all over. This can be because they have changed or the times have changed.

The reason we’re alive is to express ourselves in the world. And creating art may be the most effective and beautiful method of doing so.

Consider that it might not have been your initial style that attracted success, but your personal passion within it. So if your passion changes course, follow it. Your trust in your instincts and excitement are what resonate with others.

through this brutal edit we change our relationship to it. We come to understand its underlying structure and realize what truly matters, to disconnect from the attachment of making it and see it for what it is.

on a daily basis. 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. In each moment, we are immersed in a field of undifferentiated matter from which our senses gather bits of information. The outside universe we perceive doesn’t exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions, we generate a reality internally. We create forests and oceans, warmth and cold. We read words, hear voices, and form interpretations. Then, in an instant, we produce a response. All of this in a world of our own creation.

It is simply the light our prism emits naturally at this moment in time.