Quotes About Creativity

Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

La creatividad florece cuando tenemos una sensación de seguridad y de autoaceptación.

Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.

To be truly human, we all have the right to make art. We all have the right to write.

Looking at God's creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures.

By its very nature, discipline is rooted in self-admiration. (Think of discipline as a battery, useful but short-lived.) We admire ourselves for being so wonderful. The discipline itself, not the creative outflow, becomes the point.

Be careful to safeguard your newly recovering artist. Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people's plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn't. It makes us frustrated people.

Once we are willing to accept that anything worth doing might even be worth doing badly our options widen.

I now act affirmatively. I now accept creative recovery. I now allow myself to heal. I now accept God's help unfolding my life. I now believe God loves artists.

As we gain - or regain - our creative identity, we lose the false self we are sustaining. The loss of this false self can feel traumatic: I don't know who I am anymore. I don't recognize me. Remember that the more you feel yourself to be terra incognita, the more certain you can be that the recovery process is working.

Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us.

The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start where you are. It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it's not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

When I make this point in teaching, I am met by instant, defensive hostility: "But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?" Yes … the same age you will be if you don't.

Boredom is just "What's the use?" in disguise. And "What's the use?" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page. THE ARTIST DATE The other basic tool of The Artist's Way may strike you as a nontool, a diversion.

Writing, as we are taught to do it, becomes an antihuman activity. We are forever editing, leaving out the details that might not be pertinent. We are trained to self-doubt, to self-scrutiny in the place of self-expression.

You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children—no taggers-on of any stripe.

The trick to finding writing time, then, is to write from love and not with an eye to product. Don't try to write something perfect; just write. Don't try to write the whole megillah; just start the whole megillah.

In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly. What we are after here is the healing of old wounds—not the creation of new ones. No high jumping, please! Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal. These are baby steps. Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.

Do not fear mistakes," Miles Davis told us. "There are none.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move

1. I am a channel for God's creativity, and my work comes to good. 2. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them. [...] 4. Creativity is the Creator's will for me. 5. My creativity heals myself and others. [...] 8. Through the use of my creativity, I serve God. [...] 14. As I listen to my creativity I am led to my Creator. [...] 17. I am willing to let God creative through me. 18. I am willing to be of service through my creativity.

We procrastinate because we think we must write our entire project. But to break procrastination, we need only write our first thought. Our second, third, and fourth thoughts follow. Soon we are writing, and procrastination is a thing of our past.

Para ser realmente inmortal, una obra de arte debe escapar de todos los límites humanos: la lógica y el sentido común sólo interfieren. Pero una vez se han roto estas barreras, entrará en los reinos de las visiones y de los sueños de la infancia». GIORGIO DE CHIRICO