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Creativity Quotes
"People can think only in images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels."
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"Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun."
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"I love the words, because they love me too."
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"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
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"The English approach to ideas is not to kill them, but to let them die of neglect."
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"Protect your finest hours for your greatest work. Bring on your craft and lift us with you."
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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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"I've decided the act that cannot wait / is the important will to create / But, ah, if my belly is ignored / the pantry door I shall implore / But I've been known to reach the bed / ideas still famished in my head."
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"For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable."
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"I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page."
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"A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties."
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"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely, but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."
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"I think the first draft is so challenging because that elusive BALANCE is so challenging."
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"In another place was a vast array of idols-Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy."
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"Our original idea was to help three or four hundred candidates in the first election run for the Ohio State legislature and the California legislature around the country."
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"I cannot tell you how important fresh, crisp writing is for an aspiring writer. Plot is great. The overall concept is super important. But the writing is what sells your work. It all boils down to the words you choose and the order in which you arrange them."
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"In real life I do violence, but for psychic stuff I do other things better."
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"If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."
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"There must be a certain amount of imitation, copying, in outward technique, but when there is inward, psychological imitation surely we cease to be creative."
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"For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse."
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"We don't want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want."
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"The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text."
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"In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind."
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"Play is the highest form of research."
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"Frankly, I was surprised at how generous the Japanese press has been to the idea of a foreigner running Sony."
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"So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter."
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"We have run out of creativity for children and teachers alike in the name of pushing up standards."
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"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."
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"I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination."
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"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."
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"So much of a novelist's writing, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them."
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"I am one thing, my writings are another."
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"Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows."
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"A brainstorm about the difference between rain and brain: a b, although both are juicy like water... but if it rained in the brain would that mean that ocurred a brainwash? and if so what would be the cure for that?? That's rough for sure. But if the rain plays mainly in the land would it land instead of fail to fall?? What's the meaning of it all? i'm a brainiac with some brainy thoughts.."
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"When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away."
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"Minimalism wasn't a real idea - it ended before it started."
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"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."
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"It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books."
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"The time has come ' the Walrus said 'To talk of many things Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax - Of cabbages - and kings - And why the sea is boiling hot - And whether pigs have wings.'"
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"My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything."
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"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering."
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"Colorless green ideas sleep furiouslythree old owls on a chest of drawerswere screwingthe daughter of the doctor.But then the mother called them,colorless green ideas slepp furiously."
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"What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do."
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"I'm not into writing many more books or more pages. My goal is to increase the value of each sentence I write. And for that, I have to just erase my past and bring only forward what matches the new me, things I can easily rewrite and adapt to my new perspective."
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"The future of fiction? he said. Maybe, she said. Will it have room for, you know, love & stuff? he said. Always, she said. OK then, he said."
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"Everybody is born creative, but very few people remain creative."
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"Everything you write is not simply a collection of words, but a means of influence not to be taken lightly. Let your recipient's emotions be the gondola, and your words, its gondolier."
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