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Creativity Quotes
"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
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"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."
58
"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."
57
"We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?"
56
"I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it."
55
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."
54
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers."
54
"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."
54
"It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa."
53
"That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon."
53
"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."
53
"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."
53
"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."
51
"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."
51
"It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life."
51
"It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine."
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"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."
50
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
50
"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
50
"The same Source that gave you the idea, will give you the means to see it through."
50
"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."
50
"The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction."
50
"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..."
50
"He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas."
50
"A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs."
49
"Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself."
49
"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."
48
"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."
48
"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."
48
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
48
"It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
48
"When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat."
47
"Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage."
47
"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."
46
"Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats."
46
"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."
46
"Ingenuity is the ability to solve difficult problems, often in an original and creative way."
46
"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material."
46
"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences."
45
"You can have manic-depression without having an ounce of creativity."
45
"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."
45
"I'm back in these regions of fumbling dark uncertain creation, but it's my one and only world, and I'll do the best I can."
45
"The bottom line is, winter navigation on the Seaway is a bad idea."
45
"Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity."
45
"Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation - from the writers of the world's religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists."
45
"In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress."
45
"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
44
"It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
44
"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."
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