Quotes About Creativity

I stare at him coldly. "I do not care for needlework." I pause. "Unless it involves the base of the skull.

I've never dreamed of a story idea. I have such boring dreams.

I started writing when I was 9 years old. I was like this weird kid who would just stay in my room, typing little funny magazines and drawing comic strips.

Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun.

People say, 'What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?' I say, they don't really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they're gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

Nudity is an art. Besides, art is only nudity... There's no more art, only too much civilization. Art is barbarious... Art is loneliness... Nothingness is perfect nudity.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across—each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip—is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books.

I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.

I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would I want to be stupid like everyone else?

To write is to know that you are not at home.

Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass—an hourglass that drains grain by grain.

Belief is the enemy of a storyteller

Henri Matisse once said, "It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Writing one's story narcotizes it. Literature today is an opiate.

Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass—an hourglass that drains grain by grain. Literature gives me life, and life kills me. Well, life kills everyone.

Of course I received various permutations of the "Who will want to marry you if you read so much?" lecture, but I also had to endure the chilly "Don't try to be so different from normal people." Different from normal people? When I first heard that, I was sorely offended. I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would I want to be stupid like everyone else?

Literature gives me life and life kills me.

Literatura e groapa mea cu nisip. E locul meu de joaca, in ea imi construiesc fortaretele si castelele, acolo petrec momente glorioase.

My library has two books," Fadia says, "and I have yet to finish coloring the second one." She brightens, and her laughter grows louder when she realizes I've cracked a smile. "Fadia can be funny sometimes.

I have my writers' neuroses but not their talents.

I'm not stupid, romantic, or a busy Russian novelist.