Quotes About Creativity

Studio D has a lot of symbolism for me.

'Pomegranate,' started with my imagining a bullet going through the fruit and causing it to bleed. My initial associations were with pomegranates in old masters painting and their Judeo-Christian symbolism.

Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time, I want precision. And in order to be precise about stuff, you have to get personal. Symbolism is very boring.

I remember when I was in film school. It was my second year, and some kid did - had this really over-religious symbolism; like, it said 'John 3:16' and had angels falling over, and it was just this insane - it wasn't that great.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

I am much more aware of making the plot more original, avoiding contrivance, having the story matter much more. I used to think more about symbols consciously. Now I think much more about the story.

Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.

My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.

I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.

Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?

I don't think that digital photography is romantic yet. It's not sympathetic the way that film is.

For this reason poets and artists developed the doctrine of Art for Art's Sake. The community did not appear to need them, so, tit for tat, they did not need the community. This being granted, it was no longer necessary or even desirable to make one's poetry either intelligible or sympathetic to the community.

I try to photograph with love and sympathy.

Not everyone can write a book or paint a picture or write a symphony, but almost anyone can fall in love. There is something almost miraculous in that.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

I don't see myself necessarily having a burning desire to write a symphony.

I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.

A symphony is no joke.

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

My parents once caught me conducting Beethoven's 'Fifth Symphony.'

To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.