Hello. I am Deepak Kundu, an avid book reader and quotes collector. Here is a list of 23 quotes that I liked and saved while reading Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert. I hope you enjoy reading them.
Big Magic Quotes
A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here. I know that’s what you want for yourself, because that’s what I want for myself, too.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. It’s as if all our gods and angels gathered together and said, “It’s tough down there as a human being, we know. Here – have some delights.”.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
We must understand that the drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend attempting to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it. At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is – if only so that you can go on to make other things with a glad and determined heart. Which is the entire point. Or should be.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Your creative work is not your baby; if anything, you are its baby. Everything I have ever written has brought me into being. Every project has matured me in a different way. I am who I am today precisely because of what I have made and what it has made me into.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Keep your eyes open. Listen. Follow your curiosity. Ask questions. Sniff around. Remain open. Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day. Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping toward us, constantly passing through us, constantly trying to get our attention.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
The sooner and more passionately you get married to this idea – that it is ultimately entirely up to you – the better off you’ll be.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Your education isn’t over when they say it’s over; your education is over when you say it’s over.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes – but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don’t even bother trying to be creative in the first place.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
There are only so many hours in a day, after all. There are only so many days in a year, only so many years in a life. You do what you can do, as competently as possible within a reasonable time frame, and then you let it go.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that – whatever the outcome – you have traveled a noble path.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it’s a terrible master – because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there’s never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Work hard, make the most of your opportunities, and grow, grow, grow.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Everybody imitates before they can innovate.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
You don’t just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the weird demands of creative living. Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Most individuals have never had enough time, and they’ve never had enough resources, and they’ve never had enough support or patronage or reward … and yet still they persist in creating. They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust – and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
This is how it feels to lead the faithful creative life: You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. […] Chop up that failure and use it for bait to try to catch another project. Someday it might all make sense to you – why you needed to go through this botched-up mess in order to land in a better place. Or maybe it will never make sense.
from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert