Quotes About Creativity

Go to the poets, they will speak to thee More perfectly of purer creatures--

A poet does not see or hear or feel things that others do not see or hear or feel. What makes a person a poet is the ability to recall what she has felt and seen and heard. And to relive it and describe it in such a way that others can then see and feel and hear again what they may have missed.

A cheerful life is what the Muses love, A soaring spirit is their prime delight.

O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in every thing. What more I have to say is short, And you must kindly take it: It is no tale; but, should you think, Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

Cheap matter offered they to boyish wit

Imagination, which in truth Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason, in her most exalted mood.

How Nature by extrinsic passion first / Peopled my mind with beauteous forms or grand' (Book I.)

My gentle Reader, I perceive, How patiently you've waited, And now I fear that you expect Some tale will be related. O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in every thing. What more I have to say is short, And you must kindly take it: It is no tale; but, should you think, Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times.

Next to his pecker, a picker's fingers are his most precious body parts.

Get in there. Sing the song. Get out. I'm not big on a hundred takes and a thousand overdubs. My kind of singing isn't meant to be perfect. It's meant to reflect the imperfections of a human being like me. After a couple of takes, that reflection is pretty accurate.

I think I need to keep being creative not to prove anything but because it makes me happy just to do it... I think trying to be creative, keeping busy, has a lot to do with keeping you alive.

pick up Trigger and see where this new

I believe in looseness.

Say what you want without saying it yourself: quote. Very useful, this, sometimes lovely, and versatile, too: big thoughts in small pieces, neatly wrapped and bundled in bulk, in different flavors for different tastes.

Cunning authors cut to be quoted.

Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing.

Ironically, later we used the money that we were able to bring to the camp to wipe our bottoms. We simply didn't have any other paper. We tore ten-guilder notes into quarters and then we could use them four times. That was just fine, because it's not pleasant to have a dirty behind.

Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, forced himself to write by disrobing and giving his clothing to his valet with strict instructions that it not be returned until he had written the allotted pages.

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Johnny zingt geen liedjes. Johnny is zelf een liedje.

Art brings the unseen into the world. That's why I don't paint what I see, or things based on old paintings. I paint what I dream. I'm bringing the other world into this one.

cut a piece of moist skin from a dead horse, and tied it tightly over the wound. Curly