Quotes About Creativity

The most important thing is that you love what you are doing, and the second that you are not afraid of where your next idea will lead.

The details are not the details. They make the design.

We like to think we're pretty special, and, OK, in some respects maybe we are. And we like to think that we design for ourselves. And we do, we really do. But in the important ways we are really very much like a lot of other people. And if you are going to design for yourself, then you have to make sure you design deeply for yourself, because otherwise you are just designing for your eccentricities and that can never be satisfying to anyone else.

That is, we believed, the supreme duty of the parent, who only was permitted to claim in some degree the priestly office and function, since it is his creative and protecting power which alone approaches the solemn function of Deity.

People tend to conceptualize problems in such a way as to validate the tools that are familiar and available to them. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have are antibiotics, you will always look for the germ. If all you have is a mindset of war, then you will always look first for an enemy.

Almost any time someone gets an exciting creative idea, the thought, "How can we make money from this?" follows close behind. But when profit becomes the aim, and not a mere side effect, of artistic creation, the creation ceases to be art, and we become sellouts.

We are born creators, here to achieve the exuberant expression of our gifts. The

Because writing is a creative process. One idea sparks our imagination, so we often go off on a tangent to explore that new idea. Then another idea sparks a new idea, so we go off on another tangent. But to stay on course—not just in a paragraph, but also in a larger piece as well—we need to make sure every paragraph states and develops just one idea.

Consider a favorite story—even a story from your own life. On a piece of paper, express this story in three ways. First, draw a straight line from left to right, with hash marks to indicate moments in time. Create a simple chronology: "just one thing after another." Then create a series of circles, showing recurring patterns in the story. Then create a series of triangles, showing trios of characters or ideas at different stages of the story.

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.

Don't be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don't follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it's enough.

Inventing is the mixing of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less materials you need.

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.

Any fool can write a book, and most of them are doing it

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.

Char me the trunk of a redwood tree. Give me pages of white chalk cliffs to write upon. Magnify me thousands of times, and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania — then might I write largely enough for our subjects.

All humans are Scheherazades: we die each morning if we don't have a good story to tell.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

relentlessly strive to come up with new and better products and produce them more efficiently than the alternatives.

STYLE IS NOT HOW YOU WRITE IT IS HOW YOUDO NOT WRITE LIKE ANYONE ELSE

Everything that can be invented, has been invented.

I'm not a joke machine. You can't just feed crap in and get funny out.

...for a writer humor is a rubber sword — it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.