Quotes About Creativity

No one has claim to originality in literature; all writers are more or less faithful amanuenses of the spirit, translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes.

The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.

Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and she might have put a sewing machine to shame.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

Drenched in British purples, I have offered up my tones: pigeon breast, hind belly, balky mule lung, monkey bottom pink, lapis lazuli and malachite, excited nymph thigh, panther pee-pee, high-smelling hen hair, hedgehog in aspic, barrel-maker's brothel, revered rose, monkeybush, turkey-like white, sly violet, page's slipper, immaculate nun spring, unspeakable red, Ensor azure, affected yellow, mummy skull, rock-hard gray, brunt celadon, shop soiled smoke ring.

What follows is a review of the results of one study I worked on, sponsored by the Institute for Psychedelic Research at San Francisco State University in which the objective was to enhance creative problem-solving ability.

The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.

For life is short and the art of writing books is very, very long.

A kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution consisting of paired nouns or a noun phrase. For example, in ancient Icelandic verse, a sword is not a sword but an "icicle of blood"; a ship is not a ship but the "horse of the sea"; and eyes are not eyes but the "moons of the forehead." Similarly, the earth is "the floor of the hall of the winds" or "the sea trodden on by animals," while fire is "destroyer of timber" or "the sun of houses.

Jive undertakes to remedy that situation with language that makes up for the dullness of mere existence.

Maybe that's why young people make success. They don't know enough. Because when you know enough it's obvious that every idea that you have is no good.

If you're going to frame a crazy, build a crazy frame.

As writer Jack London put it: "You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club!

Experimental ideas are very often born by chance as a result of fortuitous observations.

We want people to realize you are at a design school, not a land grant college. The way we look says a great deal about who we are.

The chef who cooks without a song on his lips cannot hope to infuse the right carefree improvisatory note into his art.

If I hadn't of had music in my life, it's quite possible I'd be dead and I'd much rather be alive.

We do this basically for ourselves. People appreciate it, which is cool, but I think they appreciate that we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it our way, and how people like it is not up to us. We like it.

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.

Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.

As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer.

Hariot would make a detailed record of the New World in writing, and White would undertake a series of illustrations and paintings. Together they would be Ralegh's ears and eyes in America.

Writing it down is the way I make it real, the way I find my way into what it is I feel. The words on paper or computer screen tell me more than what I knew before I wrote them, help me remember what I'm afraid I'll forget, let me keep what I don't want to lose, say to me: You were here.

Sometimes dreaming is even better than making plans" -Houndsley