Quotes About Creativity

Unfortunately we have to remember we're scientists, not writers of popular semifictional archaeological claptrap.

induction motor, radio control, wireless communications, spark plugs. It was said that his ideas and inventions came to him fully formed in a flash of inspiration.

What do you expect me to do, leap across space and brain them with the jawbone of an ass? Or maybe they'll go away if I throw ricks at them?

Having a ten-year-old daughter can be like living with a fairy. Something magical.

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ( Casual Chance , 1964)

I have found my voice again and the art of using it...

As late as 1701, a Bordeaux ship's captain was able to persuade his employers that he had lost his cargo off Newfoundland to a fire-breathing dragon looming out of the deep.

If I examine a painting through a microscope I shall learn about the texture of the paint, but nothing about the artists intention in painting the picture

I never write purely for the fun of it. I write as a mathematician uses a sheet of paper for doing calculations: because I think better that way

The world, Left Coasters insisted, can be easily and frequently reinvented.

The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits ("Where Eagles Dare [fast version]," "Horror Business," "Hybrid Moments") and Blanck Mass ("Dead Format"). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth.

The farm's carpenters were true artisans - they had to be to keep all those book from jumping off the shelves, so many wonders did they contain.

David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth.

Rumsey closed with an appeal for nurturing the artistic temperament in young and old alike, "to stoke that Apollonian ember in all mortal beings.

I wrote two five-page short stories, two five-page epics, to audition for my college's creative writing workshops, and was turned down both times. I was crushed, but in retrospect it was perfect training for being a writer. You can keep 'write what you know'—for a true apprenticeship, internalize the world's indifference and accept rejection and failure into your very soul.

Where the goblin world and its assaults were banished and there was nothing but possibility

I had a roll of non sequiturs in my pockets and I was just tossing them out across the water trying to get a good skip going.

I lit fires because I didn't know back then it was enough to see it in my head," Zippo said. "I didn't have to do it. That's why people dig my boudoir photographs. Seeing it can be the same thing as doing it.

Most people say, "Show, don't tell," but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they're like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.

Be kind to everybody. Make art. Fight the power.

Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel not so terrible about my various emotional issues.

Three cheers for your rich interior life, may it serve you well come rent day.

If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.