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Creativity Quotes
"No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly."
71
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."
68
"I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing."
68
"I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect."
68
"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."
68
"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."
67
"We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?"
66
"That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon."
66
"It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa."
65
"Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still."
65
"I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions."
64
"To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion."
64
"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."
62
"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
62
"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."
61
"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
60
"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."
60
"I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state - a new idea, this - even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms."
59
"It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
59
"The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as 'given to a person. A man or woman may have talent whether he or she uses it or not; talent can probably be measured in the person as such. But creativity can be seen only in the act. If we were purists, we would not speak of a 'creative person, but only of a creative act."
59
"The idea we came up with, well before we left, was something we coined Performance Literature. Excuse the use of that second word, because I realize it's presumptuous. Also, excuse the first word, and the term in general."
59
"It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life."
59
"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."
59
"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language."
59
"The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction."
59
"To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character."
58
"A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs."
58
"Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage."
58
"When you left on Saturday, I felt a horrible void, I saw you everywhere, on the beach, in your room, in the garden: impossible for me to get used to the idea that you had left."
58
"It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine."
58
"He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas."
58
"Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness."
57
"Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to."
57
"I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years."
56
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
56
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
56
"For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible..."
56
"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm."
55
"The same Source that gave you the idea, will give you the means to see it through."
55
"The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself."
55
"You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been."
55
"Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats."
54
"When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat."
54
"Buildings designed exclusively on scientific principles will depress their occupants and constrain their creativity."
54
"You have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing."
54
"My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted."
53
"An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea."
53
"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
53
"It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them."
53
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