What matters is how well you walk through the fire. Charles Bukowski Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwile effort. The difficulties art makers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar. From Art and Fear, by David Bayles & Ted Orland There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. From Art and Fear, by David Bayles & Ted Orland You have to give art the chance to happen. You have to either keep working through the painful periods, which is rough, or you must find the strength to return to your art when you're ready. This can be even rougher. But in either case, don't be put off by the feeling that the real artist wouldn't have these doubts, these struggles. It's simply not true. From Making Room for Making Art, by Sally Warner