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Art Quotes

    “Creativity is often misunderstood.  People often think of it in terms of artistic work – unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect.  If you look deeper, however, you’ll find that some of the most inspiring art forms – haikus, sonatas, religious paintings – are fraught with constraints.” ~ Marissa Mayer, via Talk Like TED

      “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” ~ Zen Poetry

        “The man, the art, the work: it is all one.” ~ Eugen Herrigel

          “We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides.  And so what shall we wonder at?  Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?  Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished.  The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.  We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”

          Robert Ardrey via Acts of God

            “I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.” ~ Suzuki

            Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? [Book]

              Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck by Seth Godin

              By: Seth Godin

              From this Book: 28 Quotes

              Book Overview:  Made for dipping into again and again, Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? brings together the very best of Seth Godin’s acclaimed blog and is a classic for fans both old and new. ‘Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are going to do with that duck is a far more important issue.’ Since he started blogging in the early 1990s, he has written more than two million words and shaped the way we think about marketing, leadership, careers, inno­vation, creativity, and more. Much of his writing is inspirational and some is incendiary. Collected here are six years of his best, most entertaining, and most poignant blog posts, plus a few bonus ebooks.

              Buy from Amazon!  Not on Audible…

              Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.

              Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

              1. Top 15 Quotes from Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck by Seth Godin
              2. Seth Godin Quote on Quitting—Quitting More So You Can Focus More On What Matters [Plus 30 Things to Consider Quitting] (Beyond the Quote 71/365)

                “Just about every great, brave, or beautiful thing in our culture was created by someone who didn’t do it for the money.”

                Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                  “Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you’re stalling.  You don’t wait for inspiration; you command it to appear.”

                  Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                    “Be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone, and, most of all, of doing important work.”

                    Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                      “My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it.  The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create; at least it does for me.” ~ Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                        “Ninety-nine percent of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before.  The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.  The devil doesn’t need an advocate.  The brave need supporters, not critics.” ~ Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                          “Writers, of course, are obliged by our professions to spend much of our time going nowhere.  Our creations come not when we’re out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we’re sitting still  turning those impressions into sentences.  Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art.  Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield.” ~ Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness

                            “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wiesel