“We read to know we’re not alone.” -William Nicholson, play Shadowlands
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson, essay Self-Reliance
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” -Albert Einstein
We all have that little voice in our heads. Those fleeting thoughts, feelings, observations, and questions.
We have them and move on. We’re busy. We’ve got other things to do.
But great artists don’t move on.
They get curious. They stay with the little voice. Turn it over. Interrogate it. Follow it wherever it leads. Eventually, they create something that makes the rest of us say, “Yes! I’ve thought that, too! I’m not alone.”
And we’re not.
Alone.
We all have that little voice.
Perhaps we just need to pay more attention to it.
