Quotes About Creativity

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

Remember this when you're struggling for a big idea. You're much better off scratching for a small one.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

If you're at a dead end, take a deep breath, stamp your foot, and shout "Begin!" You never know where it will take you.

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

We get into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last one.

The goal is to connect with something old so it becomes new. Look and imagine.

Better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.

I am magnetically drawn to images, whether they're paintings, photographs, film, or video. They are all lodestones of inspiration to me.

I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance.

Creativity is a habit and the best creativity is the result of good work habits

As Mozart himself wrote to a friend, "People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.

Sadly, some people never get beyond the box stage in their creative life. We all know people who have announced that they've started work on a project-- say, a book-- but some time passes, and when you politely ask how it's going, they tell you that they're still researching. Weeks, months, years pass and they produce nothing. They have tons of research but it's never enough to nudge them toward the actual process of writing the book.

When Homer composed the Iliad and Odyssey, he was drawing on centuries of history and folklore handed down by oral tradition. When Nicolas Poussin painted The Rape of the Sabine Women, he was re-creating Roman history. When Marcel Proust dipped his petites madeleines into his tea, the taste and aroma set off a flood of memories and emotions from which modern literature has still not recovered.

Too much planning implies you've got it all under control. That's boring, unrealistic, and dangerous.

Planning lets you impose order on the chaotic process of making something new, but when it's taken too far you get locked into a status quo, and creative thinking is about breaking free from the status quo, even from one you made yourself.

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable.

Dance is a tough life (and a tougher way to make a living). Choreography is even more brutal because there is no way to carry our history forward. Our creations disappear the moment we finish performing them. It's tough to preserve a legacy, create a history for yourself and others. But I put all that aside and pursued my gut instinct anyway. I became my own rebellion. Going with your head makes it arbitrary. Going with your gut means you have no choice.

We want our artists to take the mundane materials of our lives, run it through their imaginations, and surprise us.

The real secret of creativity is to go back and remember.

Like creativity, collaboration is a habit—and one I encourage you to develop.

Michelangelo is celebrated for the Sistine Chapel; in fact, he supervised a dozen unacknowledged assistants. Even one of the greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, chose to deflect credit for his compositions, writing at the bottom of each of his pieces "SDG," for Soli Deo Gloria—to God alone the glory. By