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    “Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large.  Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

      “Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash.  What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal.  What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people’s style, or personal rantings that do no really express anything.  Audiences, however, are hard to fool.  They feel the lack of rigor, the imitative quality, the urge to get attention, and they turn their backs, or give the mildest praise that quickly passes.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

        “Sometimes greater danger comes from success and praise than from criticism.  If we learn to handle criticism well, it can strengthen us and help us become aware of flaws in our work.  Praise generally does harm.  Ever so slowly, the emphasis shifts from the joy of the creative process to the love of attention and to our ever-inflating ego.  Without realizing it, we alter and shape our work to attract the praise that we crave.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery