Quotes About Creativity

When I have fears that I may ceace to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain.

Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy

Fine writing, next to doing nothing, is the best thing in the world.

Let me write not for fame and laurel, but from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful even if my night's labors be burnt each morning and no eye ever shine upon them.

The imagination may be compared to adams dream. He awoke and found it truth.

There is an old saying well begun is half done - 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, Not begun at all till half done; so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (a priori) can say nothing about it.

Let the winged Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.

I will stay very little while, for as I am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have its course bad or good ...

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: - Ode to Psyche - Excerpt

Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

Oh, sweet Fancy! Let her loose; Everything is spoilt by use (...) Let the winged Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home

yet I must not forget Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet: For what there may be worthy in these rhymes I partly owe to him:

John Gibson Lockhart, writing in Blackwood's Magazine, described Endymion as "imperturbable drivelling idiocy". With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes

For what has made the sage or poet write but the fair paradise of Nature's light?

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact'ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain … When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs.

Had you 'artists' had a part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it would have ended up looking like a particularly vulgar train terminal," Ignatius snorted.

In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day.

Although the style of each varied in crudity, the subjects of the paintings were relatively similar: camellias floating in bowls of water, azaleas tortured into ambitious flower arrangements, magnolias that looked like white windmills.

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip. ? John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole