Quotes About Creativity

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

I actually play piano and violin, but I don't have a passion for it. It didn't make me wake up in the morning wanting to do it, or go to bed thinking about it.

A writer starts out, I think, wanting to be a transfiguring agent, and ends up usually just making contact, contact with other human beings. This, unsurprisingly, is not enough.

I started out wanting to be an actor and I like to give actors as much as possible. I love writing stuff where they can really lose control.

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

Co-writing is a very unnatural feeling. It's like wanting to document a feeling that you have and then trying to get someone else to describe it for you.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

Everything we have today that's cool comes from someone wanting more of something they loved in the past. Action figures, videogames, superhero movies, iPods: All are continuations of a love that wanted more.

You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.

I grew up wanting to be a painter and paint pictures.

The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.

When I started making movies, I was pretty young, and at the time I felt like there needed to be more confrontation in cinema - or I needed to make something more disruptive - so in the beginning, those movies were me wanting to play with the rules.

I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.'

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

I don't even know what made me start wanting to do music. It just... happened. Because I sat in my basement all the time, and music was my best friend, and I just wanted to be a part of it.

I think focusing limits you. As long as nothing that I'm doing suffers from my ADD in wanting to do everything, then I want to just keep doing everything. It keeps it fresh and fun.

My transition from wanting to be a cartoonist to wanting to be a writer may have come about through that friendly opposition, that even-handed pairing, of pictures and words.

You can't plan for people to like your movies. I knew that people were not going to run in droves to the theater for the 'In the Valley of Elah.' I knew they might not want to see it, but I still had to the movie; I felt very strongly about it. Wanting to keep telling a good story is what you want to do, a compelling story.

I acted when I was young, but at 19, I had my own theater company where I acted but also directed. I also did some theater in Los Angeles. So I was always wanting to direct, even before I became an established actor.

For me, acting is like a holiday. When you're directing, you have a strong sense of responsibility for others. It's exciting but exhausting, especially when you're like me: always wanting to break the rules.

There's the dual challenge of wanting to speak from an authentic place, and then being able to be honest about it. Even in the most mannered art, I think that's what people value, is a voice that comes from a real place.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.