David Campbell

"Discipline is remembering what you want."

— David Campbell

Creative leaders sometimes struggle with discipline.  They procrastinate.  They know they should pick up the pen and write or pick up the paint brush and paint, but they find excuses.  This quote hits the nail on the head.  If you are procrastinating, remember what you want.  What is your dream?  What is it you want to accomplish?  Why are you here?  Focus on your goals and you will have the discipline to do what you need to do.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them.  Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life."

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Polish Novelist

1902 - 1991

Are you curious about people?  Are you interested in their stories?  Novelists and storytellers need to have a strong interest in people.  To tell a great story, a novelist has to understand people and their motives.  I think the same is true of a portrait artist?  In order to paint someone, an artist needs to see inside the person.  An artist is painting more than the surface.  An artist must paint the heart and soul of a person.  So again, my question:  Do you seek people out and listen to their stories?

The second part of this statement is even more important — being kind to others.  The world is in need of a lot of kindness today.  Kindness must start one person at a time.  I must first be kind before I can expect others to be kind.  Am I kind to those around me?  To family, friends and strangers on the street?  How should I demonstrate my kindness?  How do I show my caring?  Can you be kind without loving the person?  What is the demonstrable difference between love, caring and kindness?  Or are they cut from the same cloth? 

John F. Kennedy

"When power narrows the area of man' concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence."

— John F. Kennedy

American President/Writer

1917 - 1963

This is a fascinating quote from one of the most powerful and famous people in the 20th century.  The wielding of power narrows one's focus.  We usually think the reverse of people with power.  They can do anything they want.  But Kennedy is saying that power actually limits what you focus on — what you are engaged in.   Poetry, for Kennedy, served the purpose of broadening his focus and open up new worlds of understanding.  And I think art, music, and novels do that as well.  Our jobs tend to keep us focused on a narrow group of topics.  Reading books, listening to music and observing art can carry us out of ourselves to other worlds. 

Tuli Kupperberg

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."

— Tuli Kupperberg

American poet

1923 - 2010

Are you in rut doing the same thing over and over?  Do you need to break or change the pattern and see the world from a different angle?  Creative insight comes from breaking down the old way of seeing and looking with new eyes.  Climb a tree and see the world differently.  Stand on your head and change your perspective.  Turn that vase upside down and paint it in a new color.  Paint an onion on top of child's head.  Break your patterns and visualize the world anew.

Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

"I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in heaven."

— Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

French Artist

1796 - 1875

his dying words

Working in health care all these years has taught me that death comes to us all and that we need to be ready for it.  I love this quote because it expresses a deep desire to always be creating.  How terrible a place this world would be if we could not paint, write or sing.  Death for me is not being able to create, not being able to express myself.  When I have stopped writing for periods of time, I felt like I had died.  I ask the same question of God:  "Will I be able to write poetry in heaven?"

Marc Chagall

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works, if from the head, almost nothing."

— Marc Chagall

Russian Artist

1889 - 1985

Sometimes the mind gets in the way of creativity.  We are constantly talking to ourselves about our work and usually this self-talk is very negative.  "Oh, I shouldn't say that.  What will my mother say?"   Or "I am no good at painting faces."  One expert says that 75% of what we say to ourselves is negative and this negativity hurts our ability to create.  We need to learn to use positive self-talk, to appreciate the talent we have been given.  Since there are enough negative people in the world who will put us down and criticize our work, we don't need to do it to ourselves.  I challenge you to listen to your self-talk and whenever it is negative, change it and make it positive. 

George Elliot

"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

— George Elliot

English novelist

1819 - 1880

When it comes time to knock on those pearly gates and you look back across your life, what are you going to remember?  For most of us, it will be the people we've known and had some relationship with.  Will you have left this world a better place?  Will you have left the lives of those you love better?  Creative people, whether writers, painters or actors, often are known for their art, not their relationships.  I recently was reminded of this by the Jackson Pollock movie.  In his relationships with people, Pollock was a disaster.  I believe that an artist can be both creative and emotionally stable, but it takes working on relationships as much as we work on perfecting our art.

Bernard Malamud

"Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go."

— Bernard Malamud

American novelist

1914 - 1986

Who are your heroes?  Who are the people who inspire you?  We all need heroes.  Growing up my heroes were baseball players like Bob Gibson and Stan Musial.  In college my political heroes were Eugene McCarthy, Senator, and Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader.  The poets who were my heroes in those college years were T. S. Elliot, Arthur Rimbaud and Theodore Roethke.  When I got into business, my hero was Tom Peters.  I modeled my speaking style after his.  Harry S. Truman, 33rd President, is another of my heroes.  Who are your heroes?  Who has inspired you?  Heroes are important because they role-model what we want to be.  They push us to go farther than we think possible.

Victor Hugo

"Laughter is the sun that drives the winter from the human face."

— Victor Hugo

French novelist, poet

1802 - 1885

Humor helps to cleanse the spirit — to clean out the cobwebs in our souls.  Are you able to laugh that deep belly laugh?  To give yourself up to the moment?  What makes you laugh?  I don't always laugh at the same things as others.  I don't laugh at many movies that others find funny.  I enjoy humor in the absurd, in the contradictions.  I don't like humor that makes people look stupid.  I don't like humor that makes fun of groups of people.  I can laugh deeply and have laughed so hard that I have tears in my eyes and can hardly breathe.  Have you laughed today?

Pablo Picasso

"Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

— Pablo Picasso
Spanish Artist

1881 - 1973

We all are born creative, curious and compassionate.  Slowly the world around us grinds these traits down to the bone.  Our challenge is how do we remain creative, curious and compassionate into old age?  How do we hold on to that which is us?  For some of us we express our creativity through art, writing, music and stories.  What are you doing to keep your creativity alive?   

Georgia O'Keefe

"Imagination makes you see all sorts of things."

Georgia O'Keefe
American Artist

1887 - 1986

Imagination is essential and necessary for the creative leader — writers, artists, poets, storytellers, musicians.  And in my experience we have very little control over it.  It appears when it wants to.  Have you ever struggled with a problem and could not find the answer and suddenly it appeared out of nowhere.  A few weeks ago, I was struggling with a project and during my morning walk at 5 am, the answer popped into my head.  Take good care of your imagination.  Encourage it.  Feed it.  Stretch it.  Trust it.  And believe in it.  Imagination is one of the best gifts that you have been given.

Do you know what it means to feed your imagination?  Give it large doses of information.  The creative mind needs information to be able to connect the dots between the strange and the obscure.  Read books on all kinds of topics.  Listen to people tell their stories.  Observe and study nature.  

Robert Persig

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands."

— Robert Persig
American Writer

1928 - 

This is a lesson I learned many years ago when as a young man I set out to change the world.  To change anything, one must first change one's self.  Are you unhappy with your job?  Begin by changing yourself — improve your skills, educate yourself.  Are you unhappy with your marriage?  Change yourself.  No one is perfect.  What are you doing that makes your spouse mad?  Change it.  Most married people set out to fix their spouse.  You can't change your spouse.  You must first change yourself.  

Another part of change is that only you can change yourself.  No one else can change you.  Not your parents, though they try.  Not your boss, though he may try.  Not your spouse.  Only you can change you.  And you will only change when you are ready.

Martha Stewart

"I love the challenge of starting at zero every day and seeing how much I can accomplish."

— Martha Stewart

1941 -

In many respects, each day is an opportunity to begin again.  Yesterday is gone and we can not change what we did.  Tomorrow is not here yet.  So we need to focus on what we can do to day to become the person we were meant to be.  It does not matter that we did not paint or write yesterday.  Don't beat yourself up over what is past.  Begin each day anew.  

J. B. Massieu

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart."

— J. B. Massieu

1743 - 1818

This quote says it all.  Have you expressed appreciation and gratitude to someone today?  We should be thankful for what we have been given.  And give thanks each and every day for our blessings.  Thank someone in your life today.

Claudia Black

"Trust in yourself.  Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe."

— Claudia Black

In my experience, your first instinct is probably more accurate than weeks of analysis.  Most of us though don't trust our instincts.  Our subconscious mind is constantly registering data from the world around us that the conscious mind does not even realize is there.  And it is from a subconscious analysis of this data that our instincts arise.  Do you trust yourself to make the right decisions in your art?  Do you follow that gut reaction that you have or do you analyze the painting, the poem or the story to death?

Mark Vonnegut

"Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in."

— Mark Vonnegut
American Writer

1947 -

Writing for me is a spiritual exercise.  I did not realize until I read an essay a year ago in which Mark Vonnegut talks about his father, Kurt, one of my favorite authors.  The quote opened for me the door into why I have spent 35 years writing without fame or fortune.  Since I rejected organized religion at age 18, writing became the spiritual road I walked.  Writing gave my soul the strength necessary to face the traumas of this world.  I was called to be a preacher but I could not preach until I first cleansed my soul and made it strong through writing.  The writing is what makes me whole, gives meaning to my life, and keeps me believing even when I feel there is nothing left to live for.  Here is a short poem I wrote a year ago today.

May your heart

be fluent

in the languages

spoken by God

that you

may understand

the healing power of His love.

Paul Gauguin

"Color!  What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."

— Paul Gauguin
French Artist

1848 - 1903

As a writer, I have lived in a black and white world.  The pages of books are black and white.  The page I write on is black and white.  I have come to color only slowly when I took up the study of art about a decade ago.  The complexity of color is hard to understand.  Since the impressionists, color has been celebrated and let free.  The old Dutch masters were darker, deeper.  What is the color of your life?  Bright?  Sparkling?  Deep?  Dank?  Dark?  Autumn is coming — my favorite season.  A time of reflection.  The colors shift and darken.  The greens fade from the world.  We see yellows, reds and browns.  Then winter will be here and we are back to black and white, waiting for spring to sprout.

Erica Jong

"Everyone has talent.  What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads."

— Erica Jong
American Writer

1942 - 

What is your talent and have you followed where it will lead you?  As a writer, it has happened to me.  When I get close to revealing the darkness within my spirit, I back away.  My mind finds some reason to get up from the writing table.  And I don't follow my talent into the dark cave of my imagination.  As a speaker and storyteller, there are places I don't go because I know others will be uncomfortable.  It takes courage to follow your muse —  to open yourself up and expose your secrets to a world that might laugh and make fun.  Yes, Erica, everyone has talent.

Isak Dinesen

"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them."

— Isak Dinesen
Danish Writer

1885 - 1962

In the last 20 years, the publishing world has sought to give us more and more memoirs —   people sharing their own stories of their sorrow and pain.  They have taken Dinesen's quote to heart.  And there is a lot of truth here.  We all tell our personal story — if not to others, at least to ourselves.  When my wife and I wrote our book on pet loss, we gave voice to the pain that these pet lovers felt.  We allowed them to tell their stories.  What is your story?  What sorrows darken your face?  Have you put it in words?  In pictures?  In music?  Healing comes with the sharing of our stories.

Rainer Maria Rilke

"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."

— Rainer Maria Rilke
Austrian Poet

1875 - 1926

The creative journey is about love.  We must be passionate about what we do.  If you don't love painting or writing or playing music, you won't do the work necessary to overcome the obstacles you face.  Painting a picture, writing a novel or composing music requires a lot of solitary time.  You have to love what you do and want to do it more than anything else in the world.  The more you give to your art, the more you will receive in return.