Quotes About Creativity

Quality storytelling inspires quality dialogue.

A working imagination is research.

You may think you know, but you don't know you know until you can write it down. Research is not daydreaming. Explore your past, relive it, then write it down. In your head it's only memory, but written down it becomes working knowledge. Now with the bile of fear in your belly, write an honest, one-of-a-kind scene.

Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe.

Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.

Creativity is choice-making.

As Aristotle tells us: "For the purposes of [story] a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Stanislavski called this the "Magic if …," the daydreamy hypothetical that floats through the mind, opening the door to the imagination where everything and anything seems possible.

Who are these characters? What do they want? Why do they want it? How do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the consequences? Finding the answers to these grand questions and shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.

A rule says, "You must do it this way." A principle says, "This works … and has through all remembered time." The difference is crucial. Your work needn't be modeled after the "well-made" play; rather, it must be well made within the principles that shape our art. Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

of all genres Fantasy is the most rigid and structurally conventional.

When talented people write badly it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they're driven by an emotion they must express.

No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers. We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent. No matter where a film is made—Hollywood, Paris, Hong Kong—if it's of archetypal quality, it triggers a global and perpetual chain reaction of pleasure that carries it from cinema to cinema, generation to generation.

Superficial knowledge leads to a bland, monotonous telling. With authorial knowledge we can prepare a feast of pleasures. Or at the very least, add humor.

We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the substance to support the design.

Only by using everything and anything you know about the craft of storytelling can you make your talent forge story. For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.

Generally, great writers are not eclectic. Each tightly focuses his oeuvre on one idea, a single subject that ignites his passion, a subject he pursues with beautiful variation through a lifetime of work.

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.

The writer works at his skills until knowledge shifts from the left side of the brain to the right

live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.

Porque los artistas no deben tener sólo ideas que expresar, sino ideas que demostrar. Expresar una idea, en el sentido de presentarla, nunca es suficiente. El público no debe únicamente entender; debe creer.

Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.

a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.