Quotes About Creativity

Without imagination we find it more difficult to be good, because imagination enables us to understand the pain of others: destroy imagination and you destroyed empathy.

He's called Ottolenghi, that chef. And he deserves a tongue twister of his own. Lo, Ottolenghi lengthens leeks laterally. How about that? Or, Competent chefs count cous cous cautiously?

Drawing is to art as grammar is to language: you can speak without any knowledge of grammar, but do not expect to be understood, and certainly do not expect to become a poet.

Why not imagine a talk with a pumpkin? Why not imagine going off for a drive with a friendly pumpkin, a companion who would not, after all, answer back; who would agree with everything you said, and would at the end of the day appear on your plate as a final gesture of friendship?

There may be no book on the mothers of poets, or artists in general, but it might one day be written and would be, I think, an enlightening read.

Even though are canvass was small, still we could paint a masterpiece.

When I want somebody to read to, To match a dream with tuneful phrase, It is my nurse that I pay heed to, Companion of my youthful days, Or, following a boring dinner, A neihbour comes in, who I corner, Catch at his coat tails suddenly And choke him with a tragedy, Or, (here I am no longer jesting), Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache, I roam beside my country lake And scare a flock of wild ducks resting: Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants, They fly off from the banks at once.

To "seek inspiration" has always seemed to me a ridiculous and absurd fancy: inspiration cannot be sought out; it must find the poet. For

Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.

I've always admired stylists. I put the writers of bumphable, ready-to-wear prose, calculated to sell, guaranteed not to shock, in the same category as artists who can't draw. There is a lack of bravery and a lot of fraud in them. I have tried never to write a book that didn't attempt something new in the way of narrative technique. Writing is an assault on cliche. I find little to admire in writers who make no attempt at originality.

Writing, he'd come to see, was the spiritual disease of which it considered itself to be the cure;

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....

How could he encapsulate in a pithy admissions-interview line all of his unique ideas and interests?

Unshackled by strict yet arbitrary, misguided norms, outcasts can be, look, act, and associate however they want. And in this ever conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society, the innovation, courage, and differences of the cafeteria fringe are vital to America's culture and progress. Which is why we must celebrate them.

True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.

So rapid is the flight of dreams upon the wings of imagination.

for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts.

I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute.

the very judicious plan of dividing the two acts of the opera with a ballet

We are entitled to violate history, provided that it results in handsome offspring.

But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers.

Money can take you many places, but imagination can take you anywhere.

Make your own kind of music. Sing your own special song. But don't crank the volume up so loudly you annoy the heck out of all the neighbors.