Quotes About Creativity

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

I can bend paper clips into the shapes of small animals.

Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it.

The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to canvas. I found that I was master of the elements, that I could work miracles.

Some of us will probably become famous. It will be an ironic fame fashioned largely by those who have never seen our work.

[Johnny Depp] a wonderful artist, and such a talented person. I got along with him, splendidly. He's charming and wonderful to work with. He's a dream.

To be really great, you need to be naturally funny in order to stand out. But you can work at it, and find the best vehicle that you have to communicate what you're saying to people.

The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea.

Creativity is a by-product of hard work. If I never have another really new idea, it won't matter.

I never get over feeling bad about tearing open a beautifully wrapped present. It takes ten seconds to destroy a work of art that took someone ten minutes to accomplish.

Im not really devoted or specified towards any specific genre at all. I really like it all. Theres good storytelling in all the genres, you know. I just want to tell good stories and do good work.

I don't hate being compared with female musicians. I don't mind that at all. I have no problem with seeing connections between women's work.

Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.

The admiration of another writer's work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

My theory is, independent movies only work if you're willing to push the material and do something different.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

What makes a good work of art is something that honors certain traditions and breaks with others.

There's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do.

People talk about generating my own work, but I don't really know how to go about that. There are certainly some roles in the theater I'd like to play but I don't know if I'll ever get to do it.

I hate leisure, except reading. I'm really a person made to work, if sketching is considered work.