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Creativity Quotes
"Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are."
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"I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it."
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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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"I write more with the words I leave out."
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"Excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand."
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"A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo."
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"I write because there are things in me that cannot die."
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"Authors always carry a means for scribbling and an excuse for pausing, often inopportunely, to record those fleeting sparks of creative fancy that might otherwise vanish like a wisp in the wind if ignored. Writing is a jealous and needy lover."
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"This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen — not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche — and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket."
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"When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble."
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"My pond life with hydra is over, now I'm into the ocean world of poetry to dive deeper.."
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"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship."
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"Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."
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"Creativity is applied Imagination."
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"It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the internet-""You invented the internet?", Martha said., George said."It was my idea!" Hermes said. "I mean the internet, not the rats. But that's not the point."
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"Its the fate of all creators: They fall in love with their creations."
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"The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert."
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"How many people make a career out of writing anyway?' Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. 'I'll write because I love it, the way other people knit or . . . or scrapbook. And I'll find some other way to make money."
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"Creativity is one of the highest transmissions of love."
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"I am an artist, and a rebel one at that. I live in the voluptuous dimension of imagination, so if you're expecting normalcy (dullness) from me, sorry to disappoint, but you're quite mistaken. Ordinary is not my best attire, I've tried it and normal just never fit quite right. I will always be the crazy one who believes in magic, unicorns and impossible dreams. But also love, compassion and empathy."
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"The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"
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"Am I making something worth while?I'm not sure.I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,but am I making something worth while?I'm not sure.There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn't find anything lightly to say,so I simply walked awaybut still wondered what he did with his lifebecause he didn't even speak to meor look at mebut still made me wonder who he wasand I walked away askingAm I making something worth while?I am not sure.I am a complicated person with a simple lifeand I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me."
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"A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it."
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"There is only Love -- and Stories. All else is but a shadow dream."
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"Music gives inspiration...one that sounds windy with humming sound, such can put you in a trance, only to come back and discover some witty ideas."
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"In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots."
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"Inspiration and genius - one and the same."
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"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
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"Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.."
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"Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented."
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"How to Draw a Picture (XII)Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life."
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"A little creativity can make something ordinary, extraordinary, and something extraordinary that much more so."
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"Life is an experiment, experiment by sending as many ideas in the universe and see which idea takes off and put your heart into that."
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"There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more."
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"Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember."
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"Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination."
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"To write good poems is the secret of brevity."
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"We must use time creatively."
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"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."
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"I started writing poetry and philosophy when I was 17 years old and my mind so was wild. Now I'm 56 and I often want to write like a child."
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"He felt as he always did when he finished a book - queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity."
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"Let's pursue the visage of imagination."
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"Before you get bored of yourself try creativity in your life."
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"Obviously, a writer can't know everything about what she writes. It's impossible."
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"We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away."
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"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."
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"Anyway, it's a good thing we're human. We design business spreadsheets, paint programs, and word processing equipment. So that tells you where we're at as a species. What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?"
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"Imagination is the creative force that through necessity yields solutions to resolve the issues that face us."
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"You see, I'm a juggler with words myself."
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"How are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way."
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