Hugh Macleod

Quotes

• 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'.