Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

“I must pursue my goal through thick and thin and I must not allow bourgeois society to turn me into a money-making machine,”

My underlying concerns in the book are issues that I struggle with in my own life: How do you do meaningful creative work while also earning a living? Is it better to devote yourself wholly to a project or to set aside a small portion of each day?

“Very often, when an assignment is difficult, he can’t fall asleep until the artistic problem is solved, or he dreams about various ways of designing his drawing,” she wrote in 1999. “Now that’s what I call a hard worker! Even his subconscious doesn’t give him any time off. The next morning, holding onto that dream, he rises at first light and race

he would read and reread classic cookbooks to relax himself before bed.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time o

pressure on himself to get things down during that time. “Every passage becomes a ‘passage,’ ” he wrote, “every adjective a decision.”

“work is still the best way of escaping from life!”

After dictating all morning, James would read in the afternoon, have tea, go for a walk, eat dinner, and spend the evening making notes for the next day’s work. (For a while he asked one of his

I’m scrupulous about choosing who it’s safe to wake at seven in the morning without their getting insulted. For some I perform a real service, a wake-up service; they become used to my waking them at seven or so.