Ever Yours: The Essential Letters

Vincent van Gogh

“Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.”

How Van Gogh found his purpose—his heartfelt letters to his brother on how loving relationships center us as we flounder:

A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic

Peter Turchi

“The books that give us the most pleasure, the deepest pleasure, combine uncertainty and satisfaction, tension and release.”

The psychology of flow—what game design reveals about the deliberate tensions of great writing:

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

Eric G. Wilson

In praise of melancholy and how it enriches our capacity for creativity:

The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Amanda Palmer

“You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.”

My conversation with kindred spirit Amanda Palmer on the art of asking and what Thoreau teaches us about accepting love:

The Who, the What, and the When: 65 Artists Illustrate the Secret Sidekicks of History

Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, and Matt Lamothe

The Most Generous Book in the World – a heartening illustrated homage to the wives, mothers, brothers, benefactors, and other quiet champions behind some of history’s most celebrated creative geniuses: George Washington’s dentist, Alan Turing’s teenage crush, Emily Dickinson’s dog, Alfred Hitchcock’s wife, Roald Dahl’s mother, and more.

The Portable Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

“Genius gives birth, talent delivers.”

Jack Kerouac on whether writers are born or made and the crucial difference between genius and talent, applicable to all creative fields:

The Creative Experience - Why and How Do We Create?

Stanley. Abt, Lawrence E. Rosner

“The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.”

Legendary composer Aaron Copland on the conditions of creativity and the essential interplay of emotion and intellect in the creative experience:

Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking

Vera John-Steiner

“In the course of creative endeavors, artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding.”

Fascinating read on the psychology of why creative work hinges on memory and the art of connecting the unrelated:

Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

“If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.”

Werner Herzog on creativity, self-reliance, money, and how to make a living of what you love – wisdom culled from an epic 600-page interview:

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

James Baldwin

“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.”

James Baldwin on the creative process and the artist’s responsibility to society – superb read:

Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

E. F. Schumacher

“Work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.”

Buddhist Economics – excellent, enormously timely vintage read on how to stop prioritizing goods over people and consumption over creative activity:

The Artist’s Way

Julia Cameron

“No matter what your age or your life path … it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.”

How to get out of your own way and unblock the “spiritual electricity” of creative flow:

Songwriters On Songwriting: Revised And Expanded

Paul Zollo

“People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.”

Bob Dylan on sacrifice, the unconscious mind, and how to cultivate the perfect environment for creative work:

Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind

Anna Deavere Smith

“What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.”

Anna Deavere Smith on discipline and how we can learn to stop letting others define us:

V Is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone

Seth Godin

“If you just pick one human you can change for the better, with work that might not work — that’s what art is.”

Seth Godin in conversation with Debbie Millman about his wonderful children’s book for grownups, exploring vulnerability, creative courage, and how to dance with the fear: