Quotes About Creativity

I was given talent, and if you are given it, it is your obligation to use it.

Every writer loves the idea of being able to go in and fix a problem and then leave without obligation. It's fun!

I used to feel an obligation to invent things. I felt I was a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something. I just don't feel that any more.

A writer's obligation is to invent: to go beyond what did happen and to look at what could have happened but didn't. Fiction writers are born liars.

When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.

Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.

Stories are not explanations of the world we live in. Science does that, and math does that. Our obligation as fiction writers is to enhance the mysteries.

When I went to college, it became more of a hobby, and that's when I think I got the realest music education. It wasn't something that I had to do. It wasn't an obligation.

Contractual obligations may not allow it, but that's a big dream of mine, to be able to make an album with a rock band.

The basic idea of a hackathon is to erase all routine obligations for the day so that employees can clear a mental space for creativity.

I'm lucky enough that financially I don't have to feel obliged to go for the bigger stuff. I like the stories and scripts to dictate if I want to do them.

When I first started making comics, I was living with a bunch of guys, old college friends. We had this deal. At the end of each day, they would ask me how far I'd gotten on my comic. And if I hadn't made my goals, they were supposed to make me feel really bad about myself. They happily obliged.

Quite often, I will do something and think, 'Oh, no, she looks a little too much like me.' I have tried to learn not to be afraid of that when that happens. I am not trying to obliterate myself and completely hide within the images like I used to.

The 20-year-old version of me had all this energy, and wanted to be obnoxious with his art and wanted to communicate even though he didn't know what he wanted to communicate.

I was kind of an obnoxious kid. I would imitate Celine Dion. I would jump around and belt to the rafters and do the accent and everything.

I guess I try and learn all the time from every experience in life, so my thinking is a hybrid of everything. I'd have to attribute some of that to my work in the fashion industry - in some obscure way.

I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.

I mean, most of it is probably more obscure and just more noisy than either of those two bands, but Thurston has stuff all the time that he's involved with that is fairly obscure and experimental.

I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.

Sometimes people get fairly obscure just for the creative license of it, and that can backfire. Iconic stories are iconic for a reason, and there are so many incredible, iconic history stories that have not been told that we don't need to go too deep in the well yet.

Sometimes, you try something, and it works in terms of success. That doesn't mean you like what is a hit. Sometimes you like the most obscure song on your album.

I always thought of myself as a very, very obscure artist.

As authors, we're all trying to fight against obscurity and outside distractions, but it's a tough battle.

Your worst enemy as a writer - especially one working online a lot of the time - is obscurity.