Elizabeth Gilbert, author of, as she calls it, the freakishly successful Eat, Pray, Love grapples, in her 18 minute Ted talk, with “the maddening capriciousness of the creative process.”

Gilbert challenges five hundred years of rational humanism, as she “brushes up against that thing…that source that I can’t identify.” She quit being terrified of her post-Eat, Pray, Love career when she realized the artist is not the genius, but rather someone who captures external, divine genius from time to time.

By the way, the word inspiration, in the Hebrew, is neshāmāh ‏נְשָׁמָה‎ which also translates as a breath, a wind, a blast. Consider that as she talks about her meeting with American poet Ruth Stone.