Quotes About Creativity

If a story is in you, it has got to come out.

In writing, you must kill your darlings.

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency . . . to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.

No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

Writing is one-third imagination, one-third experience, and one third observation.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

If you write something that you love beyond all reason, it is wrong and you should strike it out.

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.

The work of the artist is to lift up people's hearts and help them endure.

A novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet.

I only write when the spirit moves me ... and the spirit moves me every day. William Faulkner, Oxford, Mississippi

Then that had passed. It was 1923 and I wrote a book and discovered that my doom, fate, was to keep on writing books: not for any exterior or ulterior purpose: just writing the books for the sake of writing the books;

I write when I am inspired and I make sure I am inspired every day.

Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing.

Sometimes i think there must be a sort of pollen of ideas floating in the air, which fertilizes similarly minds here and there which have not had direct contact.

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, being an artist is an excuse for a form of behavior.

A]nd I realized then the unmitigable chasm between all life and all print–that those who can, do, those who cannot and suffer enough because they can't, write about it.

Every writer must learn to kill his little darlings.

I'd have to listen to somebody - artist or shoe clerk. And the artist is more entertaining because he knows less about what he is trying to do.

Don't be a writer; be writing.

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.

I found a way of writing where every word was as dangerous as a stick of dynamite." – William Faulkner

Esto, esto es lo que trataba de decir: que cuando algo es nuevo, difícil y brillante, es mucho mejor que si solo es seguro, pues lo seguro, las cosas seguras son precisamente las que la gente ha estado haciendo tanto tiempo, que sus bordes están ya gastados y no hay nada ya en ellas que permita decir a un hombre: «Esto no se había hecho antes y no puede ser hecho otra vez».

Brian remained enchanted by the music of words - what he once called 'the incredible foot-stomping joy of a well tuned phrase.