Quotes: Clarissa Pinkola Estés

"At its root, creativity is not about success or failure. It's a spiritual path. It's mystery."

–– Clarissa Pinkola Estés (b. 1945), American author and psychoanalyst 

via: Commonplace Book 2006-2009, 2008, p. 165. 

Quotes: Isak Dinesen

"There's no mystery in art. Do the things you can see, they will show you what you cannot see."

–– Isak Dinesen, pen name of Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962), Danish writer 

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2025, p. 46.

Quotes: Conclave movie

"Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith."

Source: Conclave movie via Austin Kleon newsletter December 20, 2024. 

via: Sketchbook N14, 2024, p. 42.

Quotes: Terry Allen

"It's necessity to confront your curiosity, confront the idea of mystery." 

–– Terry Allen (b. 1943), American musician and visual artist  

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2024, p. 21. 

Quotes: Eileen Myles

"I hope there's mystery and poetry in your life –– not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again." 

–– Eileen Myles (b. 1949), American writer, poet, performer 

Source: Valedictory words by Eileen Myles via Austin Kleon newsletter, August 23, 2024. 

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2024, p. 9.

Quotes: Carl Jung

"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."

–– Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist 

Women's quotes: Rachel Naomi Remen

"At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity." 

–– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 1938), American physician and teacher 

via: Sketchbook 30, 2018, p. 101. 

Quotes: Henry Miller

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." 

–– Henry Miller (1891-1980), American writer 

via: Sketchbook 27, 2015, p. 96. 

Quotes: Adam Zagajewski

"Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing. There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world." 

–– Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), Polish poet, essayist and translator 

Quotes: Andrew Wyeth

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape –– the loneliness of it, the dead feel of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." 

–– Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), American visual artist 

Quotes: Georges Braque

"There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain." 

–– Georges Braque (1882-1963), French painter, collagist, printmaker, and sculptor 

via: Sketchbook 20, 2012, p. 61

Quotes: Richard Le Gallienne

"We also maintain –– again with perfect truth –– that mystery is more important than half of beauty, the element of strangeness that stirs the senses through the imagination." 

–– Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947), English author and poet 

via: Sketchbook 19, 2012, p. 114

Creativity quotes: Keri Smith

"when it gets right down to it the individuals that are really doing interesting things and changing the world don't seem to [be] paying much attention to the cutting edge technologies. they're too busy conducting experiments, spending time alone, making mistakes, dreaming up new ideas, sitting in the midst of uncertainty...embracing mystery." 

–– Keri Smith (b. 1975), Canadian author, illustrator and Conceptual artist

Via: from her August 5, 2009 blog post 

Quotes 226: Agnes Martin

"Beauty is the mystery of life."

–– Agnes Martin (1912-2004), Canadian-born American abstract painter

via Sketchbook #26, p. 28

Quotes: Mystery

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand." – Neil Armstrong, American astronaut


"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science." – Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist


"Man cannot live without mystery. He has great need of it." – John (Fire) Lame Deer, North American Sioux Shaman


"Songwriting is a bit like being connected to a mystery." – Paul Kelly, Australian singer-songwriter


"I think mystery is more interesting than explanation, so let's leave this as a mystery." – Louise Bourgeois, French-American artist. Quoted from Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations, 1995, p. 123.