Quotes About Inspiration

The Bat Phone to the Universe, some kind of Iva-only, open-round-the-clock special channel to the divine.

There are so many good reasons to stop complaining if you want to live a more creative life.

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

Every time you express a complaint about how difficult and tiresome it is to be creative, inspiration takes another step away from you

You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting—its partner—and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile.

If you show up for your work day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.

I think that the difference between a tormented creative life and a tranquil creative life is nothing more than the difference between the word awful and the word interesting.

Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. It's the frosting. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. It's as if all our gods and angels gathered together and said, "It's tough down there as a human being, we know. Here—have some delights.

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.

When the mind is tired, or the soul is disquieted, let us go to the woods and fill our lungs with the rain-washed and the sun-cleansed air, and our hearts with the beauty of tree, flower, crystal, and gem." The

So you are industrious, but not original?

I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers.

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.

I always try to remind myself that I am having an affair with my creativity, and I make an effort to present myself to inspiration like somebody you might actually want to have an affair with—not

Creativity is a path for the brave, yes, but it is not a path for the fearless, and it's important to recognize the distinction.

Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana… "From the center of my life, there came a great fountain…

Stop treating your creativity like it's a tired, old, unhappy marriage (a grind, a drag) and start regarding it with the fresh eyes of a passionate lover. Even if you have only fifteen minutes a day in a stairwell alone with your creativity, take it. Go hide in that stairwell and make out with your art.

Do whatever brings you to life, then.

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.

Inspiration is always trying to work with me. So I sit there and I work, too.

I encourage makers to recognize that when you pull your ego out of the game, your work can become a series of joyful collaborations (between artist and mystery, between artist and peers, between artist and audience). The important thing is to take responsibility for continuing to show up for your side of the bargain.