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Creativity Quotes
"Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier."
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"The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes."
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"Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all."
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"Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves."
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"My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered."
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"Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world."
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"At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture."
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"And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous."
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"Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what's happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you'll see the change of focus-zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above-easily. You want to do that in what you write; it's one of the things that keep people's eyes on the page, though they're almost never conscious of it."
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"The beauty about creating soundtracks is that each time I'm living in a magical world, a world of the logic of sense away from the crazy world we're living in where materialism in charge of our destiny."
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"There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."
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"You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish."
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"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."
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"Those were some astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father's talent for it."
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"Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers."
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"Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof."
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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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"I got too fed up with films that didn't make you think. I liked the idea of one that you'd have to be dancing around with. I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film."
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"The idea of trying to fight against extremism was written off as naive."
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"Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form-spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved."
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"Philosophers wonder when they do not know, artists when they do."
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"But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good."
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"Don't jail your imagination. You cannot imagine beyond your desires. You can't unleash your imagination without the SEEDs of desire."
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"Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem."
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"While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another."
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"Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that's balls - evil. But obviously that's your livelihood."
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"It is a bird's imagination, not its wings, that determines how high it can fly."
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"Coraline tried drawing the mist. After ten minutes of drawing she still had a white sheet of paper with "MIST" written on it one corner in slightly wiggly letters. She grunted and passed it to her mother."Mm. Very modern, dear," said Coraline's mother."
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"I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances."
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"There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense of the world we live in; writing is a way to clarify, to interpret, to reinvent. We may want our work to be recognized, but that is not the reason we write. We do not write because we must; we always have a choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate. We communicate to connect, to know community."
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"If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works."
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"Screenwriting is like poker; in the end, you have to go all in."
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"Some can't handle the fiery poet, how she rips into souls burning words into prose."
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"I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc."
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"The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship."
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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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"I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script."
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"I'm interested in locating the holy grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas."
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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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"Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head."
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"I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel sorry for my psychopaths, because I do."
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"Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again."
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"Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities."
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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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"Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees."
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"The extent of creativity to which I admire in an individual is his ability to be richly creative while still, in a way, telling the truth. It is the fool who creates only his own lies, and the bore who simply repeats what he is told."
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