creativity quotes

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

All art is but imitation of nature.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I’m a painter in sound.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.