Quotes About Innovation

This is why we have to be careful of how we handle our fear—because I've noticed that when people try to kill off their fear, they often end up inadvertently murdering their creativity in the process.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.

Q: What is creativity? A: The relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration.

As a creator, you can design any sort of jewelry that you like for the inside of other people's minds (or simply for the inside of your own mind). You can make work that's provocative, aggressive, sacred, edgy, traditional, earnest, devastating, entertaining, brutal, fanciful . . . but when all is said and done, it's still just intracranial jewelry-making. It's still just decoration. And that's glorious.

So you are industrious, but not original?

I had creativity within me that was original; I had a personality within me that was original; I had dreams and perspectives and aspirations within me that were original.

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. Your fear—programmed by evolution to be hypervigilant and insanely overprotective—will always assume that any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody, horrible death. Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he's a Navy SEAL:

Creative living is a path for the brave. a

Our planet is inhabited not only by animals, and planets, and bacteria, but also ideas. Ideas are a disembodied energetic life-form. They are completely separated from us but capable of interacting with us.

Everybody imitates before they can innovate.

Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. It's the frosting.

Einstein called this tactic "combinatory play"—the act of opening up one mental channel by dabbling in another.

Which is to say, the Romans didn't believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.

Keep in mind that for most of history people just made things, and they didn't make such a big freaking deal out of it.

because in the end, creativity is a gift to the creator, not just a gift to the audience

You didn't show up ready enough, or fast enough, or openly enough for the idea to take hold within you and complete itself. Therefore, the idea went hunting for a new partner, and somebody else got to make the thing.

The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.

All the good ideas seem daunting at first.

I think a creative life is the most marvelous life there is.

It could take me a whole year just to finish one tiny short story. Most of the time, all I was doing was imitating my favorite authors, anyhow. I went through a Hemingway stage (who doesn't?), but I also went through a pretty serious Annie Proulx stage and a rather embarrassing Cormac McCarthy stage. But that's what you have to do at the beginning; everybody imitates before they can innovate.

Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping towards us, constantly passing through us, constantly trying to get our attention. Let them know you are available.

creative living is a path for the brave. We

Remain open. Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day.