Quotes About Creativity

that's what you have to do at the beginning; everybody imitates before they can innovate.

The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: "My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely).

I realized that, as a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

I made a decision a long time ago that if I want creativity in my life—and I do—then I will have to make space for fear, too.

No necesitas el permiso de nadie para llevar una vida creativa.

Hvad enten du mener, at du er genial, eller du tror, du er håbløs, så skab det, du har brug for at skabe, og send det ud i verden.

It also never occurred to me to go ask an authority figure for permission to become a writer. I'd never seen anybody in my family ask anyone for permission to do anything. They just made stuff. So that's what I decided to do: I decided to just go make stuff.

It doesn't discourage me in the least, in other words, to know that my life's work is arguably useless. All it does is make me want to play.

when courage dies, creativity dies with it.

Ó, édes serdülÅ'kor – amikor a "tehetségeseket" hivatalosan is elkülönítik a hordától, hogy ily módon a néhány kiválasztott lélek gyenge vállaira helyezzék az egész társadalom kreativitással kapcsolatos ábrándjainak terhét, miközben mindenki mást egy sokkal hétköznapibb, inspirációmentes létezésre kárhoztatnak.

since when did creativity become a suffering contest?

Just write anything and put it out there with reckless abandon.

I held on to those other sources of income for so long because I never wanted to burden my writing with the responsibility of paying for my life. I knew better than to ask this of my writing, because over the years, I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.

I work steadily, and I always thank the process.

your fear will always show up—especially when you're trying to be inventive or innovative. Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.

as a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

When I talk about "creative living" here, please understand that I am not necessarily talking about pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts.

La imagen de artista trágico que prefiere dejar la pluma antes que alcanzar sus impecables ideales no tiene nada de romántica. Elegir este camino no me parece heroico. Creo que es mucho más honesto seguir en el juego —incluso si salta a la vista que estás perdiendo— que dejar de participar debido a lo delicado de tu sensibilidad. Pero, para seguir en el juego, tienes que renunciar a tus ansias de perfección.

By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir—something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration.

What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations? I

Keep in mind that for most of history people just made things, and they didn't make such a big freaking deal out of it. We make things because we like making things. We pursue the interesting and the novel because we like the interesting and the novel.

Artists, by nature, are gamblers. Gambling is a dangerous habit. But whenever you make art, you're always gambling.

If what I've written here ends up helping you, that's great, and I will be glad. That would be a wonderful side effect. But at the end of the day, I do what I do because I like doing it.

But to suggest that nobody ever made valuable art unless they were in active emotional distress is not only untrue, it's also kind of sick.