Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear - Elizabeth Gilbert 
 Rating: 
 "[When] I refer to "creative living," [...] I'm talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear." 
 - An Amplified Existence (Courage) 
 Elizabeth Gilbert is an American author best known for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which was on the New York Times Bestseller list for more than three years following its publication in 2006 and has been adapted into a movie starring Julia Roberts in 2010. In Big Magic, she shares multiple anecdotes (from her life as well as from others') to present advices on how to live creatively. 
 "The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust--and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible." 
 - Paint Your Ox (Persistence) 
 Big Magic is definitely one of those books that will give something new on each subsequent reading. I enjoyed most of it, even if its themes aren't explored as much as I would have wanted. I liked how Elizabeth Gilbert debunked the common ideas that creativity comes from pain and that someone's creative work is his/her "baby", but the part that stayed with me the most was the one about acknowledging fear without letting it take control. 
 "Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome." 
 - The Fear You Need and the Fear You Don't Need (Courage)