Quotes About Creativity

He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small—far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.

You made it; your get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given.

While it's lovely to be childlike in your pursuit of creativity, in other words, it's dangerous to be childish.

Because creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know that when courage dies, creativity dies with it. We all know that fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.

Music is nothing more than decoration for the imagination. That

Artists, by nature, are gamblers. Gambling is a dangerous habit. But whenever you make art, you're always gambling. You're rolling the dice on the slim odds that your investment of time, energy, and resources now might pay off later in a big way—that somebody might buy your work, and that you might become successful.

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

the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

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 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 are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design.

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.

It matters./It doesn't matter. Build space in your head for this paradox. Build as much space for it as you can. Build even more space. You will need it. And then go deep within that space—as far in as you can possibly go—and make absolutely whatever you want to make. It's

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

Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us.

I work either way, you see - assisted or unassisted - because that is what you must do in order to live a fully creative life. I work steadily, and I always thank the process. Whether I am touched by grace or not, I thank creativity for allowing me to engage with it at all.

I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes - and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper.

Só porque a criatividade é mística, não quer dizer que não deva ser desmistificada - especialmente se isso significa libertar os artistas das limitações de seus delírios de grandeza, de seu pânico e de seu ego.

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don't even bother trying to be creative in the first place.

we can't just follow Paris for the sake of Paris.

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

the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me. Just say what you want to say, then, and say it with all your heart. Share whatever you are driven to share. If it's authentic enough, believe me—it will feel original. Motives

Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with. Something healthier.

I would so much rather that 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 relieve yourself of some great psychic burden, rather than to save or relieve us.

When the nineteenth-century Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai invented non-Euclidean geometry, his father urged him to publish his findings immediately, before someone else landed on the same idea, saying, "When the time is ripe for certain things, they appear at different places, in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.