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Quotes on the Courage to Create













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All one can do is to achieve nakedness,
to be what one is with all one's faculties and perceptions,
strengthened by all the skill which one can acquire,
And then to stand before the judgement of time."

Stephen Spender

What is to give light must endure burning.

Viktor Frankl


"I have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off,
I'd rather be doing something I really wanted to do. I'd walk it again."

He vivido en un borde de las maquinillas de afeitar. Qué si usted se cae,
yo estaría haciendo algo algo realmente deseé tan hacer. Recorrería él otra vez."

Georgia O'Keefe




























"What makes for great art
is the courage to speak and write and paint
what you know and care about."

Audrey Flack

"No daring is fatal.
The whole logic of the universe is contained in daring,
in creating from the flimsiest, slenderest support."

Rene Crevel


The place where I had freedom most
was when I painted.
I was completely and utterly myself.

It was more than a profession.
It was even a therapy,
for there I just told it as it was.

It takes a lot of courage in life
to tell it how it is."


Alice Neel


"Creative action plays with the unknown.
But as the child fears the dark,
full of big dogs and mental monsters
formed from fantasies,

the adult child will be fearful too,
faced with the dark world of the unknown mind,
with vast concepts looking enormous
just beyond the front yard.

Peering out, he sees no parents
in the darkness of that land
where he has never been.

The unknown is uncontrolled,
no strategies exist that will enclose
the endless territory of the new.

Only trust in yourself and in this world
can carry you past the watchdogs of your fears
and out of the iron gates of the already-known."


Arthur Deikman

What has to be given up
is not the I, as most mystics suppose:
this I is indispensable for any relationship,
including the highest,
which always presupposes an I and You.

What has to be given up is not the I
but that drive for self-affirmation
which impels man to flee
from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting,
unpredictable, dangerous world of relation
into the having of things."

Martin Buber

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A Tribute to the Individualist






"the artist lives in an atmosphere
of perpetual failure."

Harry Crews

A poet is a person who manages,
in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms,
to be struck by lightning five or six times.

   Randall Jarell

"This fundamental truth of the self can be realised only if the individual is willing and courageous enougn to follow to some natural conclusion this moment of experience,
this facing the unknown and participating with the total committment of the self.

Such expresison, such passion for life
may emerge in written, spoken, graphic
or asethetic forms in relation or in isolation;
in I-Thou enounters; and in silent, inner experience.

A compassionate willingess is required -
as is the courage to live before the fact,
before the understanding,
before any rational support or certainty,
to live the moment to its natual peak and conclusion,
and to accept with dignity whatever joy, grief,
misfortune, or unexpectedness occurs."

Clark Moustakas

"Creation
happens to us, burns into us, changes us,
we tremble and swoon, we submit.
Creation - we participate in it,
we encounter the creator,
offer ourselves to him,
helpers and companions."


Martin Buber


"The act of writing
bears something in common
with the act of love.

The writer,
at this most productive moment,
just flows.

He gives of that which is uniquely himself,
he makes himself naked.
Recording his nakedness in the written word.

Herein lies some of the terror
which frequently
freezes a writer.


"Sidney M. Jourard

"The outside wold pressures you into a mold,
but if you don't accept that - you gamble with life.
Call it gambling.

You know when I decided to become prefessional -
that means to expose yourself naked to the world
with the other creative minds,

I said, "I'm going into areas I don't know.
I might just fall right down to hell and kill myself."

And I said, "Well, who cares?
I'd rather do it and see what it's all about."
I don't want the safe way.

The safe way limits you."


Louise Nevelson




























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