To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one's mouth. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
—What lingers after this line?
The Necessary Risk of Looking Foolish
Clarissa Pinkola Estés begins with a provocation: anyone who wants to create must accept appearing “stone stupid.” In other words, genuine making starts where polish, certainty, and social dignity begin to fail. The artist, writer, or thinker often looks clumsy at first, not because the work lacks value, but because invention rarely arrives in a respectable form. This is precisely why the quote feels liberating. Rather than treating embarrassment as a sign to stop, Estés reframes it as evidence that one has entered the creative arena. Much as Samuel Beckett’s oft-cited “Fail again. Fail better” suggests, the awkward beginning is not separate from creation; it is one of its essential conditions.
Sitting on the Jackass
From that opening image, Estés turns to a more comic one: sitting “upon a throne on top of a jackass.” The contrast is deliberate. A throne implies grandeur, authority, and vision, while a jackass suggests stubbornness, humility, and absurdity. Together, they capture the strange dual nature of creative life: one may hold an inner sense of purpose while outwardly inhabiting inconvenience, ridicule, or ungainly process. Thus the quote resists romantic myths of effortless genius. Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) similarly blends nobility with foolishness, showing how lofty imagination can ride alongside apparent absurdity. Estés implies that creators must endure this doubleness, accepting both the dignity of their calling and the ridiculousness of how it often looks in practice.
Why Rubies Emerge From Disorder
Yet the final image transforms the whole passage: despite the foolish posture, one may still “spill rubies from one’s mouth.” Here Estés suggests that beauty, truth, and value can emerge from unlikely vessels. The ruby stands for something rare and luminous, and by using the verb “spill,” she hints that creative gifts do not always arrive in neat, controlled statements. Often they pour out messily, emotionally, and unexpectedly. This insight echoes artistic testimony across centuries. In Plato’s Ion (c. 4th century BC), poetic speech is described as a kind of inspired transport rather than a purely rational performance. Estés updates that ancient idea with earthy humor: the creator may look inelegant, but the work itself can still carry brilliance.
The Psychology of Creative Surrender
Seen psychologically, the quote points to the suspension of self-conscious control that creativity often demands. Many artists describe entering periods where they cannot fully explain what they are doing, only that they must continue. Research on flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, especially in Flow (1990), likewise suggests that deep creative engagement requires immersion beyond constant self-monitoring. Accordingly, Estés is not praising ignorance for its own sake. She is praising surrender: the willingness to move through uncertainty without demanding immediate mastery. The “stone stupid” state may therefore be less about lacking intelligence than about tolerating not yet knowing. In that interval, imagination gains room to operate.
A Defense Against Perfectionism
Just as importantly, the quote serves as a sharp antidote to perfectionism. Perfectionism insists that one should begin only when one can guarantee elegance, coherence, and success. Estés rejects that demand outright. Her imagery suggests that waiting to appear wise, refined, or fully prepared may be the surest way never to create anything at all. For that reason, her words resonate with everyday practice. A novice painter wasting canvas, a poet drafting sentimental lines, or a musician missing notes may feel foolish, but these humiliations are often the compost of later excellence. What looks like stupidity from the outside is frequently apprenticeship from the inside.
The Sacred and Comic United
Finally, what makes the quotation memorable is its union of the sacred and the comic. Estés does not depict creation as merely solemn, nor merely ridiculous. Instead, she shows that the creative act often contains both at once: one can be humbled to the point of absurdity while also serving something precious. That tension gives the line its force and warmth. In the end, the quote invites creators to trade vanity for vitality. If one can bear the donkey, the awkward posture, and the momentary loss of dignity, one may still speak rubies. Creation, then, is not the art of always looking wise; it is the courage to remain open until something valuable comes through.
Recommended Reading
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
One-minute reflection
What feeling does this quote bring up for you?
Related Quotes
6 selectedTo be creative is to participate in the great process of creation — and participating in creativity is participating in life. — Rajneesh
Rajneesh
Rajneesh frames creativity not as a rare talent but as an act of joining something larger than oneself. At once, the quote shifts attention away from finished masterpieces and toward participation in an ongoing process o...
Read full interpretation →Art is not a thing; it is a way. — Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard’s line immediately shifts attention away from paintings, sculptures, or books as isolated products. Instead, he suggests that art lives in the manner of seeing, choosing, and shaping experience.
Read full interpretation →When the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. — Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci’s statement begins with a simple but profound claim: art is never merely the product of manual skill. The hand may shape stone, guide a brush, or draft a line, yet without the animating force of spirit—...
Read full interpretation →Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits. — Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp
At first glance, Twyla Tharp’s quote challenges the popular myth that creativity arrives as a sudden flash of genius. Instead, she reframes it as something built through repetition, structure, and deliberate effort.
Read full interpretation →Dreams, if they're any good, are always a little bit crazy. — Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles’s remark immediately reframes dreams as something more than polite wishes or practical plans. If a dream is truly “any good,” he suggests, it must stretch beyond ordinary logic and into territory that feels s...
Read full interpretation →Art is the act of navigating without a map. — Seth Godin
Seth Godin
At its core, Seth Godin’s line defines art not as technical polish but as a willingness to move forward without guaranteed direction. To create without a map is to accept uncertainty as part of the process, trusting intu...
Read full interpretation →More From Author
More from Clarissa Pinkola Estés →Quietly and without fuss, you must trust your own heart. Your instincts are more reliable than the noise of the world. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
At its core, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s line invites a quiet act of courage: to believe that the heart can perceive truths the outside world often obscures. Rather than demanding dramatic rebellion, she emphasizes trust ex...
Read full interpretation →You are not broken. You are becoming. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
At its core, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s line transforms the way we interpret hardship. Instead of treating pain, confusion, or loss as proof of damage, she invites us to see them as signs of movement.
Read full interpretation →If you have not been called a defiant, incorrigible, unmannerly woman, there is still time. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Clarissa Pinkola Estés turns a familiar set of accusations—“defiant,” “incorrigible,” “unmannerly”—into a kind of initiation rather than a shame sentence. The line suggests that these labels often appear not when someone...
Read full interpretation →When a woman is forced to be like everyone else, she will soon be unable to do anything else. — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Clarissa Pinkola Estés frames conformity not as a harmless social preference but as a training process that shrinks a person’s range. If a woman is repeatedly pressured to be “like everyone else,” the pressure doesn’t me...
Read full interpretation →