Rick Rubin Quotes

If you’ve truly created an innovative work, it’s likely to alienate as many people as it attracts. The best art divides the audience. If everyone likes it, you probably haven’t gone far enough.

When you’re working on a project, you may notice apparent coincidences appearing more often than randomness allows — almost as if there is another hand guiding yours in a certain direction. As if there is an inner knowing gently informing your movements. Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it.

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.

Sometimes the most valuable touch a collaborator can have is no touch at all.

Art may only exist, and the artist may only evolve, by completing the work.

If a beautiful thought or phrase comes to mind, or if you see a beautiful sunset, one’s not better than the other. Both are equally beautiful in different ways. It’s helpful to consider there are always more options available to us than we might realize.

When sharing observations, specificity creates space.

If any distractions come along during that period, don’t ignore them or focus on them. Don’t give them any energy at all. Let them pass, like clouds parting around a mountain. Regularly engaging in this practice builds the muscle of focused intention, which you can use in everything you do. Eventually, tuning out the undermining voices and losing yourself in the work will not be an effort of will, but an earned ability.

Consider how different your experience of the world might be if you engaged in every activity with the attention you might give to landing a plane.

Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. In reality, they are partners. Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time.

The Beatles are proof of the existence of God.

The making of art is not a competitive act. Our work is representative of the self. You would be amiss to say, “I’m not up to the challenge.” Yes, you may need to deepen your craft to fully realize your vision. If you’re not up to it, no one else can do it. Only you can. You’re the only one with your voice.

This practice — of never assuming an experience you have is the whole story — will support you in a life of open possibility and equanimity. When we obsessively focus on these events, they may appear catastrophic. But they’re just a small aspect of a larger life, and the further you zoom back, the smaller each experience becomes. Zoom in and obsess. Zoom out and observe. We get to choose.

There's great wisdom in transitional realms between wakefulness and sleep. Right before you fall asleep, what thoughts and ideas come to you? How do you feel when you wake from a dream? [...] Keeping a dream journal might be of use. Place a pen and paper next to the bed, and as soon as you wake up, begin writing immediately with as much detail as possible before doing anything else.

Art made accidentally has no more or less weight than art created through sweat and struggle. Whether it took months or minutes does not matter. Quality isn’t based on the amount of time invested. So long as what emerges is pleasing to us, the work has fulfilled its purpose.