Quotes About Creativity

My untidy habits drive me to follow the slash-and-burn (or Mad Hatter) principle. Work on a virgin table until the mess becomes unbearable, then move on to a clean table in a clean room — or, on a beautiful summer day like this, one of the five tables dotted around the garden. Trash that table and move on again.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.* 12

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?

agree with Nietzsche that 'The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously.' A joyful life is an active life – it is not a dull static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create – such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness.

Rather than propose a new theory or unearth a new fact, often the most important contribution a scientist can make is to discover a new way of seeing old theories or facts.

Constructing models is something the human brain is very good at. When we are asleep it is called dreaming; when we are awake we call it imagination or, when it is exceptionally vivid, hallucination.

The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice—or not yet—a decided one.

If you push novelty of language and metaphor far enough, you can end up with a new way of seeing.

Arta reprezentationala de toate tipurile (si, probabil, arta non-reprezentationala de asemenea) depinde de observatia ca un lucru poate tine locul altuia si ca aceasta substitutie poate fi utila pentru gandire sau comunicare.

All life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

You may grind their souls in the self-same mill, You may bind them, heart and brow; But the poet will follow the rainbow still, And his brother will follow the plow. JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY (1844–90) 'The Rainbow's Treasure

Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.

I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book.

The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously.

cherish your creative spark, because there's no one else who can light it back up for you when it burns out.

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

But what reality was ever made by realists?

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

With imagination, you can put something where nothing was.

I had written all I was going to write, if the truth had been known, and there is nothing wrong with that. If more writers knew that, the world would be saved a lot of bad books, and more people--men and women alike--could go on to happier, more productive lives.

For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.

On writing: I don't like doing this, but it feels so good when I stop.

these were days when people still made things and used machines, instead of the opposite).