Lindsey Layton

“What is wrong with you, Olanna?" She shook her head. She would not let him make her feel like there was something wrong with her. It was her right to be upset, her right to choose not to brush her humiliation to the side in the name of an overexalted intellectualism and she would claim that right. "Go," she gestured towards the door. "Go and play your tennis and don't come back here.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“She looked me in the eye and wrote her own story then went out and lived it. The way I figure, if you want somebody else to buy what you're selling them you gotta believe it too. You can't show any doubts or the audience will feel it deep in their bones. You show fear or waver in any way, then that's what they focus on. You believe your own story, that you're the greatest coin illusionist that ever lived," she shrugged and grabbed her teacup again, "you make them all believe what you want them to.”
― Leslye Penelope, The Monsters We Defy

“Creative people have a problem that looks unique, but the truth is that all of us feel exactly like them when it comes to living our dreams, because to make art is exactly like living any dream. Every moment is brand new. We all fear what's new. Whats dangerous about being creative? Well for one thing its scary to change gears from low-anxiety, maintenance type activities to the intensity of a level of consciousness where everything is new. Perhaps you fear the size of your own gift. Having a real gift is terrifying. Artists have to strip away what is familiar so that they can see what is new and so do you whether you're an artist or not. What's new is risky and evolution has worked to teach us to avoid risk. It's developed a powerful mechanism inside of us that works to turn anything new into habit.”
― Barbara Sher, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It

“She heard her mother's voice inside her head, the way she always had and always would. "Draw slowly. Touch the surfaces of the objects with your eyes. Feel them. Focus on the feeling of touching and drawing being the same action. You don't even have to think about it.”
― Antonia Angress