Quotes About Creativity

if I can't tell the difference between a random painting and a masterpiece, maybe the random painting is a masterpiece waiting to be recognized.

Talents are like the fairies. If no-one believes in them, they die.

It's about being genuine with it and being yourself—just bringing out the creativeness, not doing the same thing everybody else is doing, regardless of whether it don't break through or pop off immediately.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. — PICASSO

If there's something to steal, I steal it! — PICASSO

When I was a child, my artist mom told me that there was no such thing as bad art. I know now that this was a complete lie. Yet it was a lie I needed to hear. It informed me that the goal of art was the creative process of discovery, experimentation, and fun. To this day, I cling to this lie as truth—especially when my pictures don't turn out right.

THE POWER OF IMAGINATION MAKES US INFINITE. — JOHN MUIR

You don't need to be a scientist to know how powerful your imagination is.

When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.

Observation performed merely on its own is no more than what a machine can do—a surveillance camera, for instance. And imagination on its own, practiced by itself for too long, can cut you off from the world. You might wander away, like a hermit to a cave, becoming only a spirit to the rest of humanity. However, if you remain in the world, and you train yourself to combine observation and imagination in proper proportion...then you may change the world itself.

Everything is improved by the judicious application of primates.

Life is different than it was in the Nineties. I'm a dad, and there are other things I have to get done in an afternoon than just being an artist.

Comedians tend to find a comfort zone and stay there and do lamer versions of themselves for the rest of their career.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.

one of his first creative contributions on linking up with Mick Jones was to change the title of a love song called "I'm So Bored with You" to "I'm So Bored with the USA.

Certain peer pressures encourage little fingers to learn how to hold a football instead of a crayon. Rumors circulate around the schoolyard: kids who draw or wear white socks and bring violins to school on Wednesdays might have cooties. I confess to having yielded to these pressures.

its not bad to be different. Sometimes it's the mark of being very very talented.

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.

I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.

Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There's some amazing work being done.

Every couple of years or so, when Daniel Clowes releases a new book, one can almost sense the rectal contraction across the collective seat of our humble profession.

Unlike prose writing, the strange process of writing with pictures encourages associations and recollections to accumulate literally in front of your eyes; people, places, and events appear out of nowhere. Doors open into rooms remembered from childhood, faces form into dead relatives, and distant loves appear, almost magically, on the page- all deceptively manageable, visceral, the combinations sometimes even revelatory.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point.