In your life, you will be evaluated by your output. But your input is just as important. If you don't have good input, you cannot maintain good output. I know for a fact I could not do what I do if I was not zealous in managing high-quality inputs into my mind every day of my life. That's why I spend maybe two hours a day writing, but I spend three to four hours a day reading and two to three hours a day listening to music.
-- Ted Gioia
I don't really think the artist is an intellectual. I believe that the artist is a set of nerves.
-- Wayne White
Just as it helps to think of the creative spirit as something we enter into, it also helps to think of ideas as things that visit us, rather than things we have ... You must make yourself ready to receive ideas. If you aren't ready to receive the ideas, the ideas might go visit someone else.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 93-94
The writer Henry Miller thought that the artist was simply a person who has antennae, "who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in the atmosphere." You must learn to put up your antennae, to be ready to receive messages from the universe, to read its signs, and to take dictation from the unsayable.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 93
An adolescent or an adult who writes poetry or does philosophy has to cultivate innocence to be able to puzzle and muse over the simplest ways we have of saying and seeing things. Sophistication may bring increased knowledge and, perhaps, a refined sensitivity. But it may also encourage a cult of experts, dull sensitivity, and may reward flatulence in thought and language. Every society needs a barefoot Socrates to ask childishly simple (childishly difficult!) questions, to force its members to reexamine what they have been thoughtlessly taking for granted.
-- Gareth Matthews
Because they're less concerned with being wrong or looking foolish, children often ask questions that adults won't ask.
-- Tom Vanderbilt
Our fear of looking foolish holds us back from learning, trying new things, experimenting, and doing our most wild, daring, creative work. If you act as though you know everything, you will learn nothing and never discover anything new.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 41
All stories become instructions for living: If you believe in art as tragedy, then in order to do creative work, you must be a genius or great talent, and you must suffer. You have to be willing to wreck your whole life and the lives of others just to make your art.
What would happen if we told the story as a comedy? In a comedy, ordinary people fumble about their lives, not knowing exactly what they're doing or where they're going. They get themselves into extraordinary situations. They fail a lot, but they remain playful and rely on their wits. They improvise and adapt. They make the most of things. They keep a sense of humor and stick around, because the ending of a comedy is always a happy one -- every ending is the beginning of the rest of their lives.
That sounds like a story I want to be in.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 35-36
Our world is awash in information. What it's lacking is wonder. We think we need more information, when what we really need is to spend more time figuring things out on our own, fumbling about, exploring, getting lost, playing through our frustrations, and discovering something of our own.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 25
Even the teachers who can tell you exactly what they know and what they're doing can't tell you exactly what you should do. No matter how good your teacher is, the learning much be done by you.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 24
I started producing and creating shows because this is my mantra ... if you don't see yourself represented, go out and represent yourself.
-- Murray Hill
The discovery that nobody knows anything can be frightening but also incredibly liberating, if you take it to heart. If nobody knows anything, you might have a shot at doing the things that you want to do after all. If nobody knows anything, you can figure things out on your own and do things your way. If nobody knows anything, nobody can tell you what to do.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 19-20
Luckily, art critics are only interested in art. If you don't call it art, the critics won't care what you're doing, and they'll leave you alone. Now you can do whatever you want.
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 9
One day I was listening to an interview with the musician Fiona Apple, and she admitted that she reads a lot of parenting books, not because she plans on having kids but because she wants to learn how to parent herself. "So, you're the parent and the child?" the interviewer asked. "Well, I mean, you always have to be," Apple said. "Everybody has to be for themselves, I think."
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 4
As I was learning to love and care for these little artists in my life, I started wondering why I didn't show myself the same love and care. It was the thought I had when I read parenting books: Why are we doing all this stuff for our kids but not ourselves? Why aren't we all taking time to play? Why aren't we all letting ourselves get bored? Why aren't we all limiting our screen time and going outside?
-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 4
On Saturday, I soaked in the syllables and sensuality of Natasha Oladokun, Pauletta Hansel, Anne M. Doe Overstreet, Brian Volck, and John Paul Davis during the The Wild Poets Bramble Ramble: Poets in the Round at Nowhere Else Festival.
6.
I mention them now,
I will not mention them again.
It is not lack of love
nor lack of sorrow.
But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.
I give them--one, two, three, four--the kiss of courtesy,
of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.
But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them the responsibility for my life.
-- Mary Oliver, "Flare"
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love -- whether we call it friendship or family or romance -- is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
-- James Baldwin
You may be exhausted from holding things and be disheartened. And even weep if you are very emotional. Which could be anyone on any day. With good reason. But then there is the next moment and the next day and...hold on[.]
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
It is hard work to hold everything and it never ends.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
Objects around us hold our attention and our love.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
The terrors of the world exist. And we are wounded. It would be so nice to never be afraid. But I am afraid that is just not possbile.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
If you meet the Holocaust, you can never escape its grip. You are obliged to feel it reverberate through all things for the rest of your life.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
How much I love things and the stories they tell.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
When I think about (Cézanne and his wife Hortense) disagreeing, bickering, being sullen, brooding and moping and then him painting cherries, or trees, and painting her over and over, I am heartened. And settled inside. Because every day is a struggle, and it is not easy. But if you can paint a bowel of cherries, that is something.
-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement.
-- John F. Kennedy
I met author Curtis McMillen last night at Out on the Lakeshore, where he spoke about his book, Brandon and Wilson at the Catch.
All these prizes are nice, I appreciate them. I don't go crazy about them -- you have to do your work whether you're recognized or not. The real deal is doing it the best you can do it and that's it. That's its own reward.
These words are shared in the spirit of Motherhood with gratitude to those who nurtured and held us, and with the knowing that we must ultimately learn to give that same tenderness to ourselves.
-- Richard Blanco
The humility of being a student is crucial to being a good musician, to being a good human being. When we stop being a student, we become an old fart.
-- Flea
(My students) remind me of the belief in endless possibility and the thrill of discovery. That moment when a student encounters a sentence that names something they felt but never had language for, that's profound.
That's why I loved [Lucy Dacus' album] Historian. I love what (Dacus) had to say about you being a historian of all the moments: If you don't write it down or take documentation of it, people won't know.
Sometimes art is showing us what is wrong or good or fun about the world we inhabit, but other times it's showing us a made-up world, with, for instance, trolls and mermaids, or magical old-lady detectives.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 84
The things we care about are the things we make art about. We frame them with our attention. Art is proof of care.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82
What an artist chooses to write or make drawings or songs about, can draw our attention to certain worlds. It tells us that somebody takes something seriously, perhaps finds it beautiful or threatening, and invites us to rethink how we feel about it.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82
Art is how adults play. Art is the continuation of play into adulthood. We keep playing as adults because we need to keep learning. Play is research. In art we research our feelings.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 72
Art is effective because it is safe. You can read a novel and experience the horror of a prison or the beauty of deep love -- but you don't have to endure the real-world consequences of those things. You can shut the book. You can leave the gallery. You can stop dancing, close your eyes, exit the movie theatre. You can go away and you can get back to your life. But you can take with you some memory of the feelings you had and that can change you.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
Art can have a tremendous effect on the world -- that is why dictators have been so eager to lock artists away or employ them as propagandists.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
There are many examples of art changing the course of history, advancing revolutions, bringing stone-cold people to tears and horrifying conservative parents.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
For a plethora of positive reasons, I was only able to finish reading a mere five books in 2025. They are as follows.
