Quotes About Creativity

Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note - and we won!

My tendency to make up stories and lie compulsively for the sake of my own amusement takes up a good portion of my day and provides me with a peace of mind not easily attainable in this economic climate.

Art goes into the world unarmed, vulnerable to every quirk of fate, and it must survive only by its power to move men not to destroy it.

I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.

All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.

Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible

Which meant he had about eight weeks to pull something amazing out of his butt. His butt was not being terribly helpful.

Raylene- Actually... I have an idea. Adrian- Oh no. R- No, it's a *good* idea. A- I don't believe you.

The things the writers have me doing on 'Suburgatory' are insane. I think they think it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Bad, quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff, because it really comes from the heart.

I know it's hard to write, darling. But it's harder not to. The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.

I chose Van Gogh.

Write so blazingly good that you can't be framed... Write like a motherfucker.

The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

all the things I'd done in my life, of all the versions of myself I'd lived out, there was one that had never changed: I was a writer.

You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. Anyone who expects you to has no sense of the arts.

clothing that placed them somewhere along the hippy/anarchist/punk rock/funked-out artist continuum.

That you're so bound up about writing tells me that writing is what you're here to do. And when people are here to do that, they almost always tell us something we need to hear. I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart. So write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker. Yours,

I'd stopped being grandiose. I'd lowered myself to the notion that the absolute only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest. Which meant I had to write my book. My very possibly mediocre book. My very possibly never-going-to-be-published book. My absolutely nowhere-in-league-with-the-writers-I'd-admired-so-much-that-I-practically-memorized-their-sentences book.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives.