Quotes About Creativity

An artist does things naturally, without effort. Some power guides his hand. A forger struggles, and if he succeeds, it is a genuine achievement.

A book is a really long continuous process, which ideally, should be interrupted only by sleep.

It is then good to remember that artists have existed and persisted, like the snail and coelacanth and other changing forms of organic life since long before governments were dreamed of.

I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who observes her,' I said, but this did not fill me with much hope. Then my friend, who is not a writer, suggested I try it from the omniscient author's point of view.

Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live, am unable to live.

A book is not a thing of one sitting, like a poem, but a longish thing which takes time and energy and since it takes skill, too, the first effort or maybe the second may not find a market.

write down all those slender ideas.

La fiebre estimula la imaginación.

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

She had begun to bake to have her eyes looking at a bowl, a flour bin, an oven, a fire, a face, anything but water. Her hands shaped loaves like scallop shells, like moon shells, like starfish; she ate them as if she ate the sea, to make it part of her, to transform bone to shell and lose herself in it, eyeless, thoughtless, wrapped in memories and anchored on some hoary rock against the currents of the deep.

Born to be Wild. She is the Wild Girl. We call her that because, like our natural wilderness, she follows her own laws. She is part of all of us, no matter what our age or sex. She is freedom and joy, love of the quest and of movement. She is creativity and serenity. She is springtime, full of potential and energy. She is the seed and the sprout, bursting with life. She is the path through the forest, and she is the forest itself.

I was seeing what a writer can do with the tatters of truth, the unfinished stories that give us no rest.

Whenever there's something wrong with your writing, suspect that there's something wrong with your thinking.

If the good news from cyberspace is that we're writing more, the bad news is that most of us aren't very good at it. Our words don't do justice to our ideas.

First, you need something to organize: ideas, material, scraps of expertise, recipes, prognostications, anecdotes, scurrilous gossip, anything that might be relevant to what you want to write. And you get this stuff by hoarding it, by faithfully making notes and squirreling them away.

An idea in your head is merely an idle notion. But an idea written down, that's the beginning of something! Stripped down to its briefs, a piece of writing is nothing more than a handful of ideas, put into words and arranged to do a job. We all get ideas—try not thinking in the shower. The trick is to write them down.

Too much thought is bad for the soul, for art, and for crime. It is also a sign of middle age.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

Brood over your topic until it becomes mellow and expansive...then put all these ideas down in writing, just a few words, enough to fix the idea...put them down on scraps of paper—you will find it easier to arrange and organize these loose bits when you come to set your material in order.

You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves. They will then regard it as their own; they will like it and maybe eat a couple of helpings of it.

For many centuries, nobles and magnates supported artists, musicians and authors so that their creative works would be dedicated to them.

But for women, the conflict between sex role and artistic commitment goes much deeper: The successful woman is-almost by definition-the one who sacrifices her self, her creativity and intellectuality, who puts them into personal (read male) and not professional (read competition) commitments.

The assumption that women's resources are available to men and that women's creativity is but the raw material waiting to be wrought into artistic shape by gifted men is one which is prevalent in literary circles—and one which demands serious and systematic attention.