Quotes About Creativity

Sometimes writing a novel feels about as rewarding as turning a spit in the fires of hell.

If you're still stuck, re-watch Misery and imagine that your number one fan insists that you finish by the end of the month.

Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.

When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook, and start the whole thing all over again." – Preston Sturges

Dwight Swain, the great writing teacher, once said that the secret of excitement is to go deeper into your characters. Create more backstory, more secrets, more complexity, and you'll get excited again.

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

at least ten writing sessions.

Don't you love that? One of the greatest scientific innovations of all time just came to Townes as he was sitting on a bench in a park. And then he starts "scratching" it out on paper.

Good writers are good readers.

Mark Twain's memory had become capricious and his vivid imagination did not always supply his story with details of crystal accuracy.

what led Twain to this conclusion: a conviction that great fiction, including his own, was necessarily autobiographical.

For Twain, the notion that great writing had to be drawn from life–rather than from what an author heard, read, or simply imagined–was an article of faith, at the heart of his conception of how serious writers worked.

Light bulbs up the ass, no big deal!" you say. "On a good night I can fit a Butterball and two sweet potatoes up my bum!" Aye--But here's the rub: How did these bulbs come to shine so brightly? They weren't plugged into an electrical socket... An hour before her performance, Ida lay spread-eagle on the ground, and she had a helping hand (and how) slowly, carefully, millimeter by millimeter--INSERT A BATTERY PACK INTO HER UPPER INTESTINE.

groups that are too much alike find it harder to keep learning, because each member is bringing less and less new information to the table. Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives.

Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives. Or, as March has famously argued, they spend too much time exploiting and not enough time exploring.

Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.

Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can't write.

I came home from work one day and felt compelled to write a book about free will.

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet.

Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing." —

When one is highly alert to language, then nearly everything begs to be a poem.

Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

Trained slugs race across his jello in eight-cylinder sombreros

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.