Quotes About Creativity

I realized one thing for sure: you can't fuck with your musical DNA without losing something sacred. I was still looking for the sacred. And not even a figure as imposing as Prince could convince me it was there when my heart said it wasn't.

Poetry is alive because it is a medium of vision and experience. It is not necessarily comfortable. It is not necessarily safe.

There are no barriers to poetry or prophecy; by their nature they are barrier-breakers, bursts of perceptions, lines into infinity. If the poet lies about his vision he lies about himself and in himself; this produces a true barrier.

Whatever is language is poetic language and if the word required by the poet does not exist in his known language then it is up to him to discover it.

Did you know that the author William Shakespeare invented more than seventeen hundred words, including 'assassination' and 'bump'?

The themes of trauma—man's helplessness, the world's randomness, and ugly, unexpected death—are difficult ones for a person to express in art.

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is to swear off having ideas.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.

You may not have before you the most creative and satisfying day to live, but you know that live it you must. You can make the day a chore; dull, nerve-wracking, frustrating, a waste of time. Or the same day can be taken on with energy, enthusiasm and a determination to make it one of the best days of your life, for yourself and those about you.

I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

George S. Kaufman, a prince of wit, once remarked that he liked to write with his collaborator, Moss Hart, because Hart was so lucky. "In my case," said Kaufman, "it's gelt by association.

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of ones flesh in the ink-pot each time one dips one's pen.

Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.

Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.

Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life.

active imagination

What exactly were the duties of an imaginary friend? Pretty much just to make it easier for the child to fit into the world without feeling too alone or scared. Hours? Whatever it took. Benefits? The incredibly pure love between a kid and an imaginary friend. It didn't get better than that. Where did he fit in the great cosmic plan? Well, no one had ever told him.

James Patterson