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Creativity Quotes
"The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept."
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"We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?"
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"A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night."
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"To read the report of a discussion in which arguments for and against are presented, in which a subject has been covered from different points of view, with new ideas advanced - this is far more instructive than to read a brief account of the resolution passed on the matter."
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"I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was."
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"I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea."
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"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
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"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
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"You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea."
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"I believe in nurturing creativity and offering a haven for creators, enabling them to develop their ideas to the fullest. With more and more talented creators being drawn to Cirque in an environment that fulfills them, these are ideal to continue developing great new shows."
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"In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea."
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"Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas."
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"To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active."
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"The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above."
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"Writing is a bitch. It's an itch that I love to scratch."
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"There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer's estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged."
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"Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don't like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don't like it."
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"There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentenceis printed in a different character shall be judged to contain somethingextraordinary either of wit or sublime."
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"Censorship of ideas or images or words is wrong."
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"There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list."
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"I am a writer, I write what I feel and what like."
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"I'm dubious about having Social Security put into the stock market. I think that we have gotten very far away from the idea that there's something sacrosanct about retirement investments."
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"I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings."
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"Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem."
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"The hardest thing in the world is to be original. It seems like our heads are filled with banalities and clichés. You have to keep digging deeper and deeper to try and find a fresh new seam that hasn't been explored."
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"Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose."
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"We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift."
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"Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour."
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"You pull a book from the shelf and there was an invention... Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily. Instead of heat transforming the ingredients, there's pure invention, the spark, the hidden element. What resulted was more than the sum of parts... At one level it was obvious enough how these separarte parts were tipped in and deployed. The mystery was in how they were blended into somthing cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious. As my thought scattered and I drifted toward the borders of oblivion, I thought I almost understood how it was done."
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"I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products."
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"That innate love of melody, which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest music a power which could well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times."
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"Word-Power'Being stuck in my room,I've become a world traveler.If you wonder how...just guess how I've reached you right now."
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"I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block."
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"Rainer Maria Rilke greeted and wrestled with the angels of his Duino Elegies in the solitude of a castle surrounded by white cliffs tall trees and the sea. I greeted most of mine in the solitude of a house that still vibrated with the throbs of a singular life that had helped shape many lives and with the ache of attempts to render useful service to that life. The River of Winged Dreams was therefore constructed as a link between dimensions of past and future emotions and intellect and matter and spirit."
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"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."
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"Imagination can turn any situation into a positive situation. Let your creativity run wild. Let yourself create new worlds, new times and new thoughts. Don't think yourself immature for having fun in dull times. Let that creativity flow into your everyday life and create beautiful new experiences."
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"If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass."
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"He smiled as he imagined the composite Jamie/Isabel, who would play the bassoon, read philosophy, interfere in other people's affairs rather too much, drive a green Swedish car and make legendary potatoes Dauphinoise."
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"A daydream is an evasion."
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"Dave Sim said in his latest thing of his, 'when you're on the right track, you'll know it, but until you get there, you have to believe you're on the right track'. Interesting little conundrum. It's not easy."
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"Writing is like breathing for my soul."
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"He seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle."
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"A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under."
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"I mean Buckingham Palace has never hired a professional public relations outfit let alone a Madison Avenue type and they would throw up their hands in horror at the very idea."
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"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."
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"But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow."
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"I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings."
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