Excerpt: How do great creators make time, find inspiration, and produce incredible bodies of work? Read these quotes from Daily Rituals to find out…
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Introduction: The secret to creating
How do the most prolific creators make the time, find the inspiration, and manage to produce such incredible bodies of work? What’s their secret? What does their routine look like? How do they balance the priorities of their lives? These were the questions that Mason Curry set out to answer in his book, Daily Rituals.
Composed of more than one hundred and sixty different working routines from some of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers, and artists who have ever lived—this book spills the beans on what some might consider to be the secret sauce for producing important work. But, what you’ll find isn’t one hundred and sixty identical (or even very similar) routines that point to one secret sauce. What you’ll find is something amounting to one hundred and sixty different recipes for producing sauce (important work) on their own.
You see, the secret to producing important work isn’t a formula that is shared by all—it’s a formula that is specific to the individual. The secret resides in understanding one’s self and doing what works best for him or her. It’s not about copying what Maya Angelou, Nikola Tesla, or Andy Warhol did on a daily basis—although understanding what they did might give you clues—it’s about creating a routine that works best for you.
Because the bottom line, as Bernard Malamud states so eloquently, “You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.” And that, is about as close to a secret sauce as you’ll find woven throughout the book: Discipline. So that you can repeat whatever worked well for you one day, to the next, to the next, to the next.
Below, you’ll find some of my favorite quotes from Daily Rituals that will give you a taste of some of these great creator’s “secret sauce.” For the complete book of “recipes,” I’ve linked Mason Curry’s book below. Thanks and enjoy!
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The List: 13 Intriguing Quotes from Daily Rituals and How Great Creators—Create
“A modern stoic knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”
W. H. Auden, via Daily Rituals (Page 3)
“I keep to [my] routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
Haruki Murakami, via Daily Rituals (Page 60) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“A solid routine saves you from giving up.”
John Updike, via Daily Rituals (Page 195)
“Some pianists say they are the slaves of their instrument. If I am its slave, all I can say is—I have a very kind master.”
Sergey Rachmaninoff, Daily Rituals (Page 179)
“My life has been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public.”
Louis Armstrong, via Daily Rituals (Page 114)
“I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.”
John Updike, via Daily Rituals (Page 195) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.”
Gerhard Richter, via Daily Rituals (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“[René] Descartes believed that idleness was essential to good mental work, and he made sure not to overexert himself.
Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (Page 151)
“I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found. I like riding, going to operas and concerts, travel in the west; but on the whole writing interests me more than anything else. If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die. I make it an adventure every day. I get more entertainment from it than any I could buy, except the privilege of hearing a few great musicians and singers. To listen to them interests me as much as a good morning’s work.”
Willa Cather, via Daily Rituals (Page 199) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.”
Henry Miller, via Daily Rituals (Page 53) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool.”
Carl Jung, via Daily Rituals (Page 41)
“Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule—in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk—exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night—six hours, seven, maybe even the recommended eight—so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.”
Stephen King, via Daily Rituals (Page 224)
“There’s no one way—there’s too much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time—not steal it—and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.”
Bernard Malamud, via Daily Rituals (Page 233)
If you enjoyed these quotes from Daily Rituals, then you should consider reading Mason Curry’s book in full. It comes warmly recommended:
Book Overview: How is a novel written? A masterpiece painted? A symphony composed? Benjamin Franklin took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec pained in brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts—he believed alcohol was essential to his creative process. Here are the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived, who, whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstands or boxing, made time and got to work.
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Written by Matt Hogan
Founder of MoveMe Quotes. On a mission to help busy people do inner work—for better mental health; for healing; for personal growth. Find me on Twitter / IG / Medium. I also share daily insights here. 🌱
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