1. "Here’s a bit of advice, without getting too after-school-special-y: Do it. If you’ve been thinking you should get back into drawing, get out your pens and stick with it. Do you know how many parties and events I miss because of comics? Most. If they made a talking doll of me and you pulled the string, it’d say I CAN’T TONIGHT, I HAVE TO WORK ON A COMIC and probably I’LL BE OVER AS SOON AS I’M DONE WITH THIS PANEL. Very few people become successful by half-assing it. Give yourself a schedule and stick to it. Try not to drive yourself insane. Love it with all your heart and tell everyone you meet all of the time. If all that sounds like too much work, think about the places it can take you."
  2. Comedian Rob Corddry talks about how Macs helped dig him out of a creative hole →

    One of the reasons I love Apple products is the way the tools themselves can inspire and encourage the work you do on them.

  3. The Hold Steady - specifically Craig Finn’s talent for character and narrative - brought me back to creating fiction after years of not doing so. There is even a minor character in the my alternate writing universe named, “Finn.” It’s interesting how one medium can influence another. I’ve always felt Springsteen’s Nebraska had as much impact on my writing as any of my favorite novels did. Look for inspiration everywhere. And understand sometimes it’s not so much about perfecting a particular craft as it is realizing how creation can cross boundaries of craft.

  4. "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. […] I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose."
    Iconic physicist Richard Feynman on beauty and curiosity

    (via curiositycounts)

  5. The Pencil Story by John Baldessari
(via jesuisperdu, via frank)

    Source: tate.org.uk

  6. "At its best poetry engages with the realities of existence. That’s why it’s so grown up. It’s the absolute opposite of this Disney idea that if you dream hard enough you can get anything - that’s so manifestly not true. Good art has a skull showing. We just need to knuckle down and produce it."
    Stephen Fry.
  7. "I love making the stuff, that’s sort of the core of it. I love creating the stuff. It’s so satisfying to get from the beginning to the end, from a shaky nothing idea to something that’s well formed and the audience really likes. It’s like a drug: You keep trying to do it again and again and again. I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work."
    Louis C.K.
  8. "

    That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.

    The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.

    "
    How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me).
  9. "‘If you want to have a more interesting life, you will make some effort,’ is how he put it. ‘It’s about the organization of one’s life. I am still shocked that so many people are not more creative, by which I mean more demanding of themselves.’"
    Pierre Boulez. (Via.)
  10. "In other words, I need to let go of the initial idea, by removing my reference material from sight, or letting myself paint over sections, or introduce something very new. It’s a point where I need to let the paintings start to have some say in the process, and by letting go of some of the control, not pushing so hard to get that end result I had in mind, I will most likely end up with something very new, maybe surprising, but most definitely more powerful than if I had forced the painting to continue in the same line of thought as in the beginning. I like to let the process change my mind."