Hugh Macleod

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.

Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted. Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.

Publishers are just middlemen. That's all. If artists could remember that more often, they'd save themselves a lot of aggrevation.

Nobody can tell you if what you're doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.

If you're creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn't the case.

Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.

There's no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada. Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time.

All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.
It's your freedom that will get you to where you want to go.

The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

The first rule of business, is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.

The bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren't even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years ago.
Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.

When I see somebody 'suffering for their art', it%uFFFDs usually a case of them not knowing where that red line is, not knowing where the sovereignty lies.

The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.
That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it's primal. Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it's a primal calling.

Diluting your product to make it more 'commercial' will just make people like it less.

Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay etc, especially if you haven't sold it yet. And the ones that aren't, you don't want in your life anyway.

It's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth.

You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.

Neither should you fret too much about 'writer%uFFFDs block'. If you%uFFFDre looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer%uFFFDs block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.

If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, you%uFFFDre better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don%uFFFDt feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation.

Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.

Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. It's that simple.

You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

People who are 'ready' give off a different vibe than people who aren't. Animals can smell fear; maybe that's it.
The minute you become ready is the the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it's no longer about 'becoming'. Suddenly it's about 'doing'.

People are fond of spouting out the old clich%uFFFD about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is somehow merit in utter failure.
Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide.

The fact is, the old clich%uFFFDs work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clich%uFFFDs are clean and tidy.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.

If you have the creative urge, it isn't going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.

The less you can live on, the more chance your idea will succeed. This is true even after you’ve 'made it'.