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Creativity Quotes
"There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations."
30
"She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess."
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"The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience."
30
"When we write, we discover answers, though the key is not in the discovery but in the timing of the implementation."
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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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"Creativity is like the light, the reason we see the light because the "switch is on and the connection is made."
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"We each have a little imagination in all of us, and a book is the best absorbent there is."
30
"Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done."
30
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
30
"When we are writing or painting or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions and opened to a wider world, where colours are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize."
30
"All great talents are never found in rich exquisite locales with perfect setting that enhance their creative works, but on the contrary are found in the most obnoxious circumstances yet are unaffected by them and create masterpieces at the most unpredictable situations, just like a lotus flower blossoming in a muddy pond!"
30
"The idea of the extraordinary happening in the context of the ordinary is what's fascinating to me."
29
"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."
29
"So rapid is the flight of dreams upon the wings of imagination."
29
"I have just explained my idea of how a constructive period of reflection, one that would send a clear message to the citizens of Europe: You should now what our priorities are. For Germany this means: Unemployment is one of one of our biggest problems."
29
"I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means."
29
"I'd like to think the scientists need us - but do they? Did Newton need Blake?"
29
"Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course... you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television."
29
"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships."
29
"I've refined my mechanics, refined my pitches. I've gotten more confidence, and I've gotten more determination. I've got a better idea what I'm doing out there."
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"Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors."
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"The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery."
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"It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice."
29
"I am constantly getting letters from inconsistancies in the back stories of these characters."
29
"If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting."
29
"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down."
29
"Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier."
29
"What we need to do is really improve energy efficiency standards, develop in full scale renewable and alternative energy and use the one resource we have in abundance, our creativity."
29
"With good parody, you have to be smarter that the people you're parodying."
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"How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all."
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"We can't live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, we're all doomed."
29
"I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself."
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"But if you have a point of view and you're an artist or a writer, it's kind of crazy to not take advantage of that, especially if you can do something that's entertaining as well. I've done a number of things like that over the years."
29
"I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead."
29
"I am a huge believer in revelations and fun twists."
29
"Characters begin as your children and become your teachers."
29
"General Grant had no fixed plan of campaign beyond the general idea to avoid the strong defensive line occupied by General Lee behind Mine Run, and find a way to draw him out to open battle."
29
"Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer."
29
"You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them."
29
"Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just and idea, just pie in the sky."
29
"With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to be said."
29
"It's just another one of those things I don't understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone else into the same ridiculous mould. It's an artist's right to rebel against the world's stupidity."
29
"Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact."
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"I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite."
29
"It was like watching a movie being played on the blank screen of his mind; the only difference was that he did not get bored, no matter how many times he watched it."
29
"I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction - not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist's heart. The doubts, the uncertainty - the jealousy! - can be breathtaking."
29
"Don't simply dream, create. Don't simply create, ship. Don't simply ship, dream."
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"Can anybody be given a great degree of creativity? No. They can be given the equipment to develop it-if they have it in them in the first place."
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