Quotes About Creativity

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.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We

But if your calling is to make things, then you still have to make things in order to live out your highest creative potential—and also in order to remain sane.

But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business.

If you made something and it didn't work out, let it go. Remember that you're nothing but a beginner—even if you've been working on your craft for fifty years. We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners. So let it go. Forget

You are worthy, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even if you don't understand the outcome.

My desire to work—my desire to engage with my creativity as intimately and as freely as possible—is my strongest personal incentive to fight back against pain, by any means necessary, and to fashion a life for myself that is as sane and healthy and stable as it can possibly be. But that's only because of what I have chosen to trust, which is quite simply: love.

Whether you think you're brilliant or you think you're a loser, just make whatever you need to make and toss it out there.

To even call somebody "a creative person" is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the senses for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.

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.

And while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.

Everything reminds us of something. But once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours.

You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others. I would so much rather you wrote a book in order to entertain yourself than to help me. Or if your subject matter is darker and more serious, I would prefer that you made your art in order to save yourself or to relive yourself of some great psychic burden, rather than to save or relieve us.

But you do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression.

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels—that's creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place—that's what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one.

you will never be able to create anything interesting out of your life if you don't believe that you're entitled to at least try.

There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi-the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast,or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent of happiness can do this, not only the rich.

Your creativity is way older than you are, way older than any of us. Your very body and your very being are perfectly designed to live in collaboration with inspiration, and inspiration is still trying to find you—the same way it hunted down your ancestors.

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels - that's creative living.