Rick Rubin Quotes

We are required to believe in something that doesn’t exist in order to allow it to come into being.

If it’s music you’re listening to, consider closing your eyes. You may find yourself getting lost in the experience. When the piece ends, you might be surprised by where you find yourself. You’ve been transported to another place. The place where the music lives.

The goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world.

If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year,
rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a
more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from
the media.

Maybe the best idea is the one you’re going to come up with this evening.

Think to yourself: I’m just here to create.

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.

The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits, down to the smallest detail, is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition.

The synergy of a group is as important — if not more important — than the talent of the individuals.

When sharing observations, specificity creates space.

This doesn’t just apply if your goal is to make art of lasting significance. Even if your goal is to make fast food, it will likely taste better if you experience the best fresh food available to you during the process. Level up your taste.

Anything that allows the audience to access how you see the world is accurate, even if the information is wrong.

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.

Art is above and beyond judgment. It either speaks to you or it doesn’t. The artist’s only responsibility is to the work itself. There are no other requirements. You’re free to create what you will.

Great art is created through freedom of self-expression and received with freedom of individual interpretation. Great art opens a conversation rather than closing it. And often this conversation is started by accident.