60 Inspiring Quotes on Creativity and Existentialism That Will Soothe the Wandering Soul

None of us got here alone.

There’s nothing more validating than reading words on paper that speak true to the deepest parts of yourself. I am a huge proponent of sharing wisdom, uplifting others, and leading with the most authentic parts of ourselves.

I am severely introverted. It is nearly impossible for me not to simply be who I am and hope it resonates with those around me. When I first hired my assistant, Lorin, we spent most of the time talking about our shared existential dread, favorite indie movies, and niche moody music we both love.
I played piano for her and she cried. We got real.

I want to share some quotes that inspire me in the hopes that you might discover something you didn’t know that you needed to hear. Whether you are a fellow woman-run business or a human on this planet trying to figure it all out, just remember: you’re not alone. We are all doing our best with the information have right now. 

*Heads up, there are existential thoughts below, enter at your own risk ;)

Tears may be shed but, hey, feeling is healthy!

Albert Einstein once said:

“When you stop learning you start dying”.

Let’s learn, together.

Creativity:

“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”

— Albert Camus

“The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient. You have to figure it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.”

— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“I’m not making it for them, I’m making it for me and it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience. So we're making art, it's almost like a diary entry. Could I be concerned that someone else might not like my diary entry? I'm making it to have my experience and as soon as I decide to share it, in my mind, it's a success.”

— Rick Rubin

“Creativity is: a funny thing. When we’re inventing something, we’re more vulnerable than we’ll ever be. Eating and sleeping mean nothing. We’re in ‘Splendid Isolation,’ like in the Warren Zevon song; the world of self, Georgia O’Keeffe alone in the desert. To be creative you’ve got to be unsociable and tight-assed. Not necessarily violent and ugly, just unfriendly and distracted. You’re self-sufficient and you stay focused.”

— Bob Dylan

"I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense"

— David Lynch

“The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.”

— Midnight in Paris

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake. Now if you think about play, you’ll see why. To play is to experiment: “What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?” The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen. The feeling that whatever happens, it’s ok. So you cannot be playful if you’re frightened that moving in some direction will be “wrong” — something you “shouldn’t have done.” Well, you’re either free to play, or you’re not. As Alan Watts puts it, you can’t be spontaneous within reason. So you’ve got risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong, and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you’re being creative, nothing is wrong. There’s no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the break-through.”

― John Cleese

Interview with Orson Wells:

Q: “What I’d like to know is where did you get the confidence from to make the film with such…”

A: “Ignorance. Ignorance. Sheer ignorance. You know, there’s no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you’re timid, or careful or” 

Q: “How does this ignorance show itself?” 

A: ”I thought you could do anything with a camera that the eye could do or the imagination could do. And if you come up from the bottom in the film business, you’re taught all the things that the cameraman doesn’t want to attempt for fear he will be criticised for having failed. And in this case I had a cameraman who didn’t care if he was criticised if he failed, and I didn’t know that there were things you couldn’t do, so anything I could think up in my dreams, I attempted to photograph.” 

Q: “You got away with enormous technical advances, didn’t you?” 

A: “Simply by not knowing that they were impossible. Or theoretically impossible. And of course, again, I had a great advantage, not only in the real genius of my cameraman, but in the fact that he, like all great men, I think, who are masters of a craft, told me right at the outset that there was nothing about camerawork that I couldn’t learn in half a day, that any intelligent person couldn’t learn in half a day. And he was right.”

Q: “It’s true of an awful lot of things, isn’t it?” 

A: “Of all things.”

“If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

― The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.”

— Aubrey De Graf.

“I tried to paint what I saw…I thought someone could tell me how to paint a landscape but I never found that person…I had to just settle down and try…they could tell you how they painted their landscape but they couldn’t tell me how to paint mine”

— Georgia O’Keeffe

“Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods! They must be allowed to do bad work! They must be allowed to get in a mess! They must be allowed to have dud experiments! They must also be allowed to have periods where they repeat themselves in a rather aimless, fruitless way before they can pick up and go on. The kind of attention that they get now, the kind of atmosphere of excitement which attends today the creation of works of art, the way that everything is done too much in the public eye, it’s really too much. The pressures are of a kind which are anti-creative.”

— David Sylvester

"You think killing is hard? Try healing something. That is hard. That requires patience. You can break something in two seconds. But it can take forever to fix it. A lifetime, generations. That's why we have to be careful on this earth and gentle."

— Salma Hayek, Beatriz at Dinner

Inspiration:

“Man suffers because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

— Alan Watts

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Where your fear is there is your task.”

— Carl Jung

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

― William Morris

“If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

— Maya Angelou

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

— Roald Dahl

"If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you."

— Dr. Gregory House

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

― Francis Scott Fitzgerald

“Someone gave me a line that became one of the most powerful uses of language over the last 14 years to help me get almost anything I want or more of what I already have. And I use it all the time. When I go order a coffee, I use it when I go to a hotel and try to get an upgrade. I use it when I'm working with partners and collaborators, I use it. And the line is what's the chance? What's the chance you can give me a discount on this? What's the chance you can give me an upgrade in this hotel room? Yeah. What's the chance you can give me in first class? Yeah. What's the chance we can collaborate in a bigger way? What's the chance you can go a little more on this? And I've used that over and over again because it continues to work. Because if we don't ask, you're not going to get it.”

— Lewis Howes

“Never work for other people. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that.”

— David Bowie

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“It took me a long time to realize that not everything in life is meant to be a beautiful story. Not every person we feel something deep and moving with is meant to make a home within us, is meant to be a forever. Sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how to love; and sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how not to love. How not to settle, how not to shrink ourselves ever again. Yes, sometimes people leave—but that’s okay, because their lessons always stay, and that is what matters. That is what remains.”

― Bianca Sparacino, The Strength In Our Scars

“Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your life’s purpose worrying about your body. This is your vessel, it’s your house, it’s where you live. There’s no point in judging it. Absolutely no point.”

— Emma Thompson

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other”

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. 

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

― Albert Camus

"Don't be a lady be a legend"

— Stevie Nicks

“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding”

— Dipen Parmar

“In the end, if I could give you one bit of advice, it would be that: find what you love, and do it as well as you can. Pursue your dream and, even if you never catch it, you’ll enjoy the chase. The rest comes down to luck, timing and God: even if you don’t believe in him, he believes in you. And when all of that runs out, use the difficulty.”

― Michael Caine, Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life

“They are not your type—They are your pattern. The reason why you self-sabotage is that it allows you to predict what is going to happen, which is giving you the illusion of self-control.”

— Unknown, originally heard from Jordan the Stallion

“Always Say Less Than Necessary. When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.”

― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

― Miles Kington

“Focus on things that want to grow. Follow the path of least resistance.”

— ReviveALL Clothing

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

"I accept myself completely here and now and consciously experience everything I feel, think, say, and do as a necessary part of my growth into higher consciousness."

— Ken Keyes

“I have been a scoundrel all my life, I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with and I’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance. I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow. When we educate each other. When we guide each other to redemption.”

— Joaquin Phoenix

“Your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.”

― Charles Bukowski

"I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people would respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded that gratitude makes optimism sustainable. And if you don't think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking. Because you don't just receive optimism. You can't wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You've got to behave in a way that promotes that."

— Michael J Fox

“First of all, just to wake up every morning is a miracle; even if you didn’t do anything all day. You’re still floating around on a rock in space in the universe. It’s amazing. You’re already amazing just for being here. Secondly, sometimes the universe has a strange way of teaching you things. Sometimes when you think your dream has been broken; a better one comes along or something happens that you weren’t expecting. The key thing for me and maybe for us is to never give up. Never give up, until you take your last breath, because life can bring some challenging stuff but it can also bring amazing things. I have faith in that.”

— Chris Martin

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”

― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“If you don’t know how to say no you spend your time doing things you don't want to do, you can't organize your day, because you can't do in the day what you wish because you are always at the disposal of other people."

— Charlie Chaplin

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

― George Bernard Shaw

"As one goes through life, one learns that if you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move."

— Katharine Hepburn

Existential/Spiritual:

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom... is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

— Anthony Bourdain

“You are a ghost, driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust, riding a rock hurtling through space. Fear nothing.”

— Unknown

“I woke up and I suddenly got it. I understood suddenly how thought was just an illusory thing, and how thought is responsible for, if not all, most of the suffering we experience. And then, I suddenly felt like I was looking at these thoughts from another perspective, and I wondered, “Who is it that is aware I’m thinking?” Suddenly, I was thrown into this expansive, amazing feeling of freedom; from myself, from my problems. I saw that I was bigger than what I do. I was bigger than my body. I was everything and everyone. I was no longer a fragment of the universe; I was the universe. And, ever since that day, I’ve been trying to get back there. …At least I know where I want to go, and I want to take as many people with me as I possibly can because the feeling is amazing!”

— Jim Carrey

“If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another. The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience. If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.”

— Deepak Chopra

“If you know how quickly people forget the dead, you will stop living to impress people.”

— Christopher Walken

"Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?"

— Clarice Lispector 

“I think that part of [less self-judgment] is observing oneself more impersonally. I often use this image: When you go into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees… and some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens and some of them are – whatever. And you look at the tree, and you just – allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is, you sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way, and you don’t get all emotional about it, you just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that, and you’re constantly saying, “You’re too this,” or “I’m too this,” or – that judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees, which means appreciating them just the way they are. And when you look at yourself as a set of phenomena, what is there to judge? Is that flower less than that? It’s just being different than that. You begin to appreciate your uniqueness without it being better or worse, because it’s just different. Cultivating an appreciation of uniqueness rather than preference is a very good one. It’s just when you get inside identification with your personality that you get into the judging mode, because then you are a part of that lawful unfolding. You’re not stepping outside of it all. The witness, or the spacious awareness, is outside of it. It’s another contextual framework.

— Ram Dass

“I don't feel particularly proud of myself. But when I walk alone in the woods or lie in the meadows, all is well.”

― Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors

“Do not stand By my grave, and weep. 
I am not there, I do not sleep— 
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain, 
I am the gentle, autumn rain. 
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush 
Of quiet birds in circling flight, 
I am the day transcending night. 
Do not stand By
my grave, and cry— 
I am not there, I did not die.” 

— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934

“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self-aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

― Rustin Cohle

“Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

“I gave into that. I finally came through it, and admitted that I would die, that it was the one promise that would not be reneged on. And now, I am totally present. All the time. Give everything I've got. All the time. It's great fun. It is liberating, absolutely liberating”

— Maya Angelou