Tag: Comedy Books

I recently finished “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. I highly recommend this book, especially if you treat it as a workbook.

The two main activities this book preaches, which aren’t obvious from the quotes below are 1) Writing three pages of stream of consciousness every morning, and 2) Going on an “Artist’s Date” with yourself every week. I’ve been writing every morning since I started reading this book in November, and I’ve definitely noticed a huge surge in creative output. Not from writing the three pages every day per say, but from getting the momentum going of writing every day. That makes it easier to write later on in the day, as the hardest part of it is starting. The Artist’s Date is just taking 2 or 3 hours a week to do some fun, child like activity with yourself, as this will inspire more creativity. Anyway, here are some actual quotes:

“People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or the specifically imagined.” (82)

“Think of yourself as an accident victim walking away from the crash: your old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet. You may feel yourself to be temporarily without a vehicle Just keep walking.” (83)

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” –Seneca (83)

“Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite – getting something down. The directions are important here.” (117)

“We are the instrument more than the author of our work.” (118)

“I remind my students that their movie already exists in its entirety. Their job is to listen for it, watch it with their mind’s eye, and write it down.” (118)

“Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results.” (120)

“Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough – that we should try again.”

“We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly.” (121)

“Very often a risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it.” (123)

“Most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it.” (132)

“Because I asked “How?” instead of “Why me?” I now have a modest first feature to my credit.” (136)

“I love movies, love making them, and did not want my losses to take me down. I learned, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: “What next?” instead of “Why me?” (136)

“Whenever I am willing to ask “What is necessary next?” I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck. I have learned that the key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choice.” (136)

“Clarke clearly took to hear the idea that it was harder to hit a moving target. Whenever one avenue for her creativity was blocked, she found another.” (137)

“Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” (137)

“Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult.” (137)

“Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.” – Linus Pauling (138)

“Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn how to play the piano?
Answer: The same age you will be if you don’t.” (138)

““I’m too old” is an evasive tactic. It is always used to avoid facing fear.” (138)

“Many blocked creatives tell themselves they are both too old and too young to allow themselves to pursue their dreams.” (138)

“We do not want to look crazy. And trying something like that (whatever it is) at our age (whatever it is) would look nuts.” (139)

“Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.” (139)

“Kids are not self-conscious, and once we are actually in the flow of our creativity, neither are we.” (139)

“Instead of allowing ourselves a creative journey, we focus on the length of the trip. “it’s such a long way,” we tell ourselves. It may be, but each day is just one more day with some motion in it, and that motion toward a goal is very enjoyable.” (139)

“You can’t learn to act because there is always more to learn.” (139)

“Doing the work points the way to new and better work to be done.” (139)

“Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.” (139)

“There is always one action you can take for your creativity daily.” (141)

“By setting the jumps too high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist sets defeat in motion. Who can concentrate on a first drawing class when he is obsessing about having to divorce his wife and leave town?” (141)

“Fantasizing about pursuing our art full-time, we fail to pursue it part-time – or at all.” (141)

“Creativity requires activity, and this is not good news to most of us. It makes us responsible, and we tend to hate that. You mean I have to do something in order to feel better?” (142)

“When we allow ourselves to wallow in the big questions, we fail to find the small answers.” (143)

“The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.” (152)

“What other people may view as discipline is actually a play date that we make with our artist child. I’ll meet you at 6:00 A.M. and we’ll goof around with that script, painting, sculpture…” (153)

“A successful creative career is always built on successful creative failures. The trick is to survive them.” (156)

“Note carefully that food, work, and sex are all good in themselves. It is the abuse of them that makes them creativity issues.” (164)

“The truth is, we are very often working to avoid ourselves, our spouses, our real feelings.” (166)

“Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that. We know – and have felt – success at the end of a good day’s work. But fame? It is addictive, and it always leaves us hungry.” (171)

“The point of the work is the work. Fame interferes with that perception. Instead of acting being about acting, it becomes about being a famous actor. Instead of wring being about writing, it becomes about being recognized, not just published.” (171)

“In the long run, fan letters from ourselves – and our creative self – are what we are really after. Fame is really a shortcut for self-approval. Try approving of yourself just as you are – and spoiling yourself rotten with small kid’s pleasures.” (172)

“As artists, we cannot afford to think about who is getting ahead of us and how they don’t deserve it. The desire to be better than can choke off the simple desire to be.” (173)

“This compare-and-contrast school of thinking may have its place for critics, but not or artists in the act of creation. Let the critics spot the trends. Let reviewers concern themselves with what is in and what is not. Let us concern ourselves first and foremost with what it is within us that is struggling to be born.” (173)

“The footrace mentality is always the ego’s demand to be not just good but also first and best. It is the ego’s demand that our work be totally original – as if such a thing were possible. All work is influenced by other work. All people are influenced by other people. No man is an island and no piece of art is a continent unto itself.” (174)

“Be willing to paint or write badly while your ego yelps resistance. Your bad writing may be the syntactical breakdown necessary for a shift in your style. Your lousy painting may be pointing you in a new direction. Art needs time to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen and finally emerge as itself. The ego hates this fact. The ego wants instant gratification and the addictive hit of an acknowledged win.” (175)

“Being true to the inner artist often results in work that sells – but not always. I have to free myself from determining my value and the value of my work by my work’s market value.” (178)

“If I have a poem to write, I need to write that poem – whether it will sell or not.” (180)

“Sometimes I will write badly, draw badly, paint badly, perform badly. I have a right do that to get to the other side. Creativity is its own reward.” (180)

“As an artist, I write whether I think it’s any good or not. I shoot movies other people may hate. I sketch bad sketches to say, “I was in this room. I was happy. It was May and I was meeting somebody I wanted to meet.” (180)

“As an artist, my self-respect comes from doing the work. One performance at a time, one gig at a time, one painting at a time. Two and half years to make one 90-minute piece of film. Five drafts of one play. Two years working on a musical. Through it all, daily, I show up…” (181)

“As an artist, I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it. My temperament will show it. If I don’t create, I get crabby.” (181)

“To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question “Why?” To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you ask just a little silly.” (181)

“If you are happier writing than not writing, painting than not painting, singing than not singing, acting than not acting, directing than not direction, for God’s sake let yourself do it.” (182)

“To kill your dreams because they are irresponsible is to be irresponsible to yourself.” (182)

“Creativity is a spiritual practice. It is not something that can be perfected, finished, and set aside.” (182)

“Just when we get there, there disappears.” (182)

“The ruthless truth is that if we don’t keep moving, we sink to the bottom and die.” (182)

“The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew.” (182)

“it is this willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.” (182)

“Those who attempt to work too long with formula, even their own formula, eventually leach themselves of their creative truths.” (183)

“Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control. This is frightening, and we resist it.” (193)

“Joseph Campbell wrote, “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.” (194)

“Bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.” (194)

“We speak often about ideas as brainchildren. What we do not realize is that brainchildren, like all babies, should not be dragged from the creative womb prematurely. Ideas, like stalactites and stalagmites, form in the dark inner cave of consciousness. They form in drips and drops, not by squared-off building blocks. We must learn to wait for an idea to hatch. Or, to use a gardening image, we must learn to not pull our ideas up by the roots to see if they are growing.” (194-195)

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” (195)

“Hatching an idea is a lot like baking bread. An idea need to rise. If you poke at it too much at the beginning, if you keep checking on it, it will never rise.” (195)

“It is a paradox of creativity that we must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must work at learning to play. Creativity must be freed from the narrow parameters of capital A art and recognized as having much broader play.” (196)

“As gray, as controlled, as dreamless as we may strive to be, the fire of our dreams will not stay buried. The embers are always there, stirring in our frozen souls like winter leaves. They won’t go away. They are sneaky. We make a crazy doodle in a boring meeting. We post a silly card on our office board. We nickname the boss something wicked. Plant twice as many flowers as we need.” (197)

“A little flattery can go a long way toward deterring our escape velocity. So can a little cash.” (199)

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” –Andre Gide (199)

“The first rule of magic is self-containment. You must hold your intention within yourself, stoking it with power. Only then will you be able to manifest what you desire.” (199)

“In order to achieve escape velocity, we must learn to keep our own counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately.” (199)

“Make a list: those friends who will support me. Make another list: those friends who won’t.” (199)

“I think the single most important factor in an artist’s sustained productivity… is what I call “a believing mirror.” Put simply, a believing mirror is a friend to your creativity – someone who believes in your and your creativity.” (219)

“Artists like other artists. We are not supposed to know this. We are encouraged to believe “there is only so much room at the top.” Hooey. Water seeks its own level and water rises collectively.” (220)

“Success occurs in clusters.” (220)

“As creative people, we are meant to encourage one another. That was my goal in writing The Artist’s Way and it is my goal in teaching it. Your goal. It is my hope, is to encourage each other’s dreams as well as your own.” (221)

If you liked these quotes, please buy the book here.

I recently read “It’s Always Something” by Gilda Radner. Here’s the quotes I found interesting:

“The news never meant anything to us on “SNL” because w always looked at it just to see how to satirize it. Nothing in our personal lives was sacred. We used all of it for material on the show. The most important thing was those ninety minutes live on Saturday night. So what if your whole world was falling apart as long as you could find a joke in it and make up a scene.” (99)

“It’s such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death.” (101)

“There’s that joke about the optimist who says, “If the house is full of shit there must be a pony somewhere.” (145)

“In the early day of “Saturday Night Live” we had our innocence and we believed in making comedy and making each other laugh. We were just working together to entertain, like kids playing together.” (153)

“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” (153)

“All the material for our show came from improvisation. We wrote our sketches on our feet in front of the audience, and rewrote them by repeating performances… I was a wreck.. It was the most stressful thing you could ever imagine. But there’s no other training ground like it for comedy writers and performers.” (164)

“You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused. Probably that’s why people in comedy can be so neurotic and have so many problems. Sometimes we talk about it as a need to be loved, but I think with me it was also a need to control. I’ll make the decision whether to come out in my underwear or not.” (183)

“People whimpering and hovering over me made me feel like I was dying. People yelling at me made me feel alive.” (199)

“I’ve learned what I can control is whether I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day, as wonderful  day, as I can.” (200)

“Cancer is what you make of it. If you make it a horrible situation, so will everyone around you. I put humor into it and I opened the technicians up to their humor.” (206)

“People who know Bob, the head radiation technician, say he should be on television, but I said, “No, he should be in the radiation therapy department cause that is where his humor is needed most.” (207)

I recently re-read “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. It’s about the creative process and how to become more productive. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Here are the quotes I found most useful.

“This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.” (22)

“What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.” (30)

“Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.” (34)

“Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.” (37)

“The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.” (40)

“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.” (42)

“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.” (43)

“Not only do I not feel alone with my characters; they are more vivid and interesting to me than the people in my real life. If you think about it, the case can’t be otherwise.” (46)

“In order for a book (or any project or enterprise) to hold our attention for the length of time it takes to unfold itself, it has to plug into some internal perplexity or passion that is of paramount importance to us.” (46)

“It’s one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.” – Telamon of Arcadia (61)

“The amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation. (63)

“The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time.” (63)

“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.” (65)

“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.” (68)

“The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.” (68)

“We’re all pros already. 1) We show up every day 2) We show up no matter what 3) We stay on the job all day 4) We are committed over the long haul 5) The stakes for us are high and real 6) We accept renumeration for our labor 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs 8 ) We master the technique of our jobs 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world” (69-70)

“That’s when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.” (72)

“The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.” (73)

“The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood.” (74)

“The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.” (75)

“The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.” (88)

“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.” (90)

“Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.” (92)

“The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.” (93)

“I have a status meeting with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself.” (98)

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” (108)

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insight accrete.” (108)

“Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.” (112)

The muses poem:
“O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey (119)

“We’re not born with unlimited choices. We can’t be anything we want ot be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.” (146)

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.” (146)

“If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.” (146)

“At some point it maxes out. Our brains can’t file that many faces. We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit.” (149)

“For the artist to define himself hierarchically is fatal… The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake.” (150-151)

“To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.” (151)

“A hack, Robert McKee says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.” (152)

“The hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, “What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for?” (152)

“The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He’s a demagogue. He panders.” (152)

“It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you’ve sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.” (153)

“The muse had me, I had to do it. To my amazement, the book succeeded critically and commercially better than anything I’d ever done, and others since have been lucky too. Why? My best guess is this: I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting, and left its reception to the gods.” (153)

“Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?” (158)

“If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?” (159)

“Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.” (160)

“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.” (161)

“That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.” (163)

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” (165)

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.