Quotes About Creativity

The main thing in making your own music is that it's an expression of someone's personality and being. That's what people want to hear, and you can't really teach that - that's just something that comes out. Teaching just hones that.

'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

I have an aunt who believed strongly that teaching kids that Shakespeare is 'hard' is wrong, so she handed me 'Hamlet' when I was in kindergarten to see what would happen. What happened was I did a book report on 'Hamlet' and caused quite a lot of trouble!

I wrote my first five horror novels while I was teaching.

While my friends were busy listening to the Talking Heads, Police, and B-52s, I was busy teaching myself to program on the Atari.

When I was seven and told my mom, 'I'm gonna be a writer,' she said, 'Oh, that's a terrible idea. You'll live in misery and die teaching other people's children badly.' My parents wanted the safer path for me, and I think they failed miserably achieving that.

I used to write at night. I was teaching school, and I was married, and had to do all the things that one does when one is working and has a family. But I used to write at night.

I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.

Entrepreneurial education in grades K-12, if it exists at all, still focuses on teaching potential entrepreneurs small business entrepreneurship - the equivalent of 'how to run a lemonade stand.'

So, immediately after that, I got a commission to write a piece for chamber orchestra, and in working on the material I discovered it was possible to incorporate the Buddhist teachings into the music, so that's what I started to do.

While working as a team, you push yourself forward and move outside the boundaries. It's a great thing.

You have to think that the answer - and the right answer - for you and your organization might not be something that's been done before. And it's up to you to discover and work with your team to form and figure out how to do successfully.

I really believe that the raw ingredient of any creative business is the set of experiences that the team has, the set of skills. I think a simple fact is that if you have a different set of experiences based on how you grew up or how other people perceive you, or if you have a different set of skills, that will produce a better company.

I let my team pick what order the records go. I don't pick my own records. I'm a fan of my music regardless so you have to think outside of the box.

I have to be my own artist. I need the world to know who I am, especially for music. When it comes to acting, that is a whole other story. I have no complaints; that's a team effort. It's not just me, it's everyone. But when it comes to music, it is solo; that's all me.

The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel.

I've always thought of the process of creating ballets as being this kind of team effort. It's not like being a painter, where you have your paint, and you have canvas, and you just go at it. I'm working with these living, breathing, functioning human beings, and they have their own thoughts and ideas about what works well movement-wise.

I wanted to make the world's greatest football undershirt. But I realized that no team sport had equipment for apparel. Apparel was an afterthought.

In college, I would do my teammate's hair and their makeup sometimes. I did a friend's makeup at the 2008 Olympics, and she said, 'Have you ever considered taking classes?' For some reason, it had never crossed my mind.

When you face obstacles or go through different phases, I always relied on my music. I depend on my music, my teammates. So at the end of the day, having incredible music, for me, would keep me in the space I want to be as an artist.

The social marketing teams of big companies will always figure out a way to advertise on Snapchat. I'd like to create a space for people who have a lot of talent but not a lot of reach.

I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.

Some of his pieces were quite good. Others-especially when he'd been drinking-looked like he'd accidentally spilled paint on canvas.

Yeah? Can you draw a skeleton riding a motorcycle with flames coming out of it? And I want a pirate hat on the skeleton. And a parrot on his shoulder. A skeleton parrot. Or maybe a ninja skeleton parrot? No, that would be overkill. But it'd be cool if the biker skeleton could be shooting some ninja throwing stars. That are on fire.