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Creativity Quotes
"Even if the creative brilliance sparks only once, it needs to be accelerated and developed so it has self-sustaining strategies to continue adding value to both the initiator and those it serves."
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"There is no greater power on this earth than story."
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"It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world."
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"Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these - 'Chloe liked Olivia'. Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."
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"I write small poems- the kind that fit on a postcard, and still can break your heart."
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"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."
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"As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs...The way I write is who I am, or have become..."
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"Imagination is the dynamic catalyst for every breakthrough."
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"If there's a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn't exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn't have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that's it. That's all an artist does."
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"Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."
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"Writers strive for the impossible: perfection. Even the universe is flawed."
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"It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more. He might have left his books, but he carried all his stories with him."
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"Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something."
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"We live in a web of ideas, a fabric of our own making."
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"Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."
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"A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,Lingering onward dreamilyIn an evening of July -Children three that nestle near,Eager eye and willing ear,Pleased a simple tale to hear -Long has paled that sunny sky:Echoes fade and memories die:Autumn frosts have slain July.Still she haunts me, phantomwise,Alice moving under skiesNever seen by waking eyes.Children yet, the tale to hear,Eager eye and willing ear,Lovingly shall nestle near.In a Wonderland they lie,Dreaming as the days go by,Dreaming as the summers die:Ever drifting down the stream -Lingering in the golden gleam -Life, what is it but a dream?"
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"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words."
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"Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done-so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well."
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"No daydreaming. No music, film, art, creative thinking or business."
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"The secret is confusion, make it, create it, live it, be it."
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"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
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"Creativity is like a muscle, you must exercise it daily or it atrophies."
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"And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves."
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"I write because the security of your love allows me to develop my craft without concerning myself with trivialities - as if your love could be any more complete. But I write, in the first place,because of you, my muse. I write for your green eyes to glance at my humble words and for the pleasure of hearing you utter them."
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"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
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"She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry...."
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"Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting-that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art-and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort."
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"Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts."
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"The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets."
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"Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation."
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"The reflection of chaos is creativity."
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"And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right."
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"I go on writing so that I will always have something to read."
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"To me, imagination is about breaking down the walls of a reality of multiple interpretations, and truly opening up your mind to assemble one clear interpretation. Once you have tasted imagination, reality will no longer be enough for you. The line between reality and dreams will become blurred, and then clear, because the line will cease to exist. Once you reach the point of living in imagination, you will truly be free."
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"Drink from the ethereal philosophy of Heaven and you may see life as no more no less than a dream made of pure poetry from divine source."
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"Creativity without discipline will struggle, creativity with discipline will succeed."
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"Genius is full of trash."
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"You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
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"As for my next book I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear pendant gravid asking to be cut or it will fall."
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"It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down. I promise I can fly before I hit the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. I swear, it doesn't hurt."
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"When you aren't satisfied with what has already been done, make something better. That is the greatest responsibility and the true freedom of creativity. The freedom is in that it doesn't need to complain."
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"And please God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I am writing for children, not golden stickers."
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"A writer cannot serve today those who make history, he must serve those who are subject to it."
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"Writers had a way of redeeming everything that ever happens to them."
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"Use your own paint, colour your world."
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"This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling."
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"Names do not write poems nor do they create work."
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"Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them."
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"Creativity is contagious. Pass it on."
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