Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life, it is because we feel safer that way.

Useless criticism, on the other hand, leaves us with a feeling of being bludgeoned. As a rule, it is withering and shaming in tone; ambiguous in content; personal, inaccurate, or blanket in its condemnations. There is nothing to be gleaned from irresponsible criticism.

The artist brain is the sensory brain: sight and sound, smell and taste, touch.

The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

Conditioned as we are to accept other peoples’ definitions of us, this emerging individuality can seem to us like self-will run riot. It is not.

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

Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself. It is great fun to write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!”

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

In a twisted version of Darwinian determinism, we tell ourselves that real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That’s hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the