Quotes About Creativity

Alc?tuirea de c?rÅ£i vaste este o nes?buin?? obositoare ÅŸi aduc?toare de s?r?cie; s? întinzi pe cinci sute de pagini o idee a c?rei perfect? expunere oral? încape în cîteva cuvinte

Para un verdadero poeta, cada momento de la vida, cada hecho, debería ser poético, ya que profundamente lo es.

Dresser des listes est l'une des plus anciennes activités du poète.

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary … More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. —Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, 10 November 1941

Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things for all men[...]and it must be ambiguous in an evanescent and modest way, almost in spite of the author; he must appear to be ignorant of all symbolism.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream

One line plus one line results in many meanings.

It's the only dish I serve my craziness for color in.

I was for years in the yellow period, you know.

Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.

Aurore sketched—it would always be her pleasure—and scribbled—it was her passion...

In May 1830, when in Paris alone with little Maurice, she found herself going to museums—the Louvre, the Luxembourg. It was not the first time, but she returned again and again, as if drunk and nailed to the Titians, the Tintorettos, the Rubens. She suddenly responded to painting as she had long before to music. Whatever métier, whatever trade or profession she would choose, she knew she would be an artist—in letters, in life, in her very being.

in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

Susan, Susan -- Poetry: aviation! Prose: infantry. [to Susan Sontag]

A rhyme turns an idea into a law; and, in a sense, each poem is a linguistic codex.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours." —

No poem is ever written for its story line's sake only, just as no life is lived for the sake of an obituary. - Joseph Brodsky

Il poeta, ripeto, è il mezzo di cui la lingua si serve per esistere. O, come ha detto il mio amato Auden, è colui in cui e per cui la lingua vive.

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.

Writer's block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

When you follow your bliss...doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.