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Creativity Quotes
"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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"I was too lazy to start a whole new story, so I just stuck a princess into the story I was working on... and The Princess Diaries was born!"
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"Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it - and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended - a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence."
20
"If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings."
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"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
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"Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts..."
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"A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission."
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"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."
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"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
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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 universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things."
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"The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream."
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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."
20
"You see a lot of good ideas or well-written scripts that are bad ideas."
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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."
19
"The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them."
19
"And at some point I would like to talk my publisher into doing an anthology of my poetry alongside some teen readers' poetry. It would be fun, and really wonderful to get their stuff out there."
19
"Now is not the time for bigots and racists. No time for sexists and homophobes. Now, more than ever, is the time for ARTISTS. It's time for us to rise above and to create. To show humanity. To spread hope. We must prevent society from destroying itself, from losing its way. Now is the time for love."
19
"The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing-only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house-not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That's when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite."
19
"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."
19
"My intention still is to write a play to commemorate, possibly rather skeptically, the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution. I started it at the beginning of 1966, but confronted with the enormous importance and reality of that revolution, I absolutely boggle. I don't know what to do about it."
19
"There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story., 1958)"
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"Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are."
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"What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration."
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"You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre."
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"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."
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"Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity."
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"Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will."
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"Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas."
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"While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest."
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"What you don't write is often more important than what you do."
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"A novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience."
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"Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake."
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"In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance."
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"In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak."
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"Context is a chain of associations which stimulate creativity."
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"A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system."
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"Creativity flourishes in solitude."
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"My mind aches with a thousand stories. All variations with shredded threads of truth."
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"Did I come into this world thru the womb of my mother the earth just so I could talk and write like everybody else?"
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"I looked up from my writing, And gave a start to see,As if rapt in my inditing, The moon's full gaze on me."
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"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
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"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world."
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"When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it. This seemed to make sense. He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformity to hateful students wasn't what he wanted to do."
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"I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it."
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"When magic through nerves and reason passes, Imagination, force, and passion will thunder. The portrait of the world is changed."
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"To describe and explain my ideas is to lose them."
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"Creativity is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as you think "harder via different thought processes."
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