Quotes About Creativity

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

He wanted to say something beautiful, I think.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

Perhaps that might be the way to write this book--to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Bring new eyes to a world even new lenses and presto, new world.

A writer of stories is a liar.

When the radio was on, music has stimulated memory of times and places, complete with characters and stage sets, memories so exact that every word of dialogue is recreated. And I have projected future scenes, just as complete and convincing--scenes that will never take place. I've written short stories in my mind, chuckling at my own humor, saddened or stimulated by structure or content.

Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit

To finish is a sadness to a writer- a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Kino escuchó el leve romper de las olas de la mañana en la playa. Era estupendo...Kino volvió a cerrar los ojos y atendió a su música interior. Quiza sólo él hiciera eso, y quizá lo hiciera toda su gente. Los suyos habían sido una vez grandes creadores de canciones, hasta el punto de que todo lo que veían o pensaban o hacían u oían, se convertía en canción...

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

A nation may be moved by its statesmen and defined by its military but it's usually remembered for its artists.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

A good writer always works at the impossible.

In utter loneliness, a writer tries to explain the unexplicable.

Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Why are you making no more songs?' I said to him in a tone like that. 'Why are you making no more songs?' 'I have grown to be a man. Only children make songs -- children and idiots.

Poetry was a secret vice, and properly so.

I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material…..

He was forever inventing a new way of doing an old thing and doing it better and quicker, but he never in his whole life had any talent for making money.

When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know it is not. This helps you take the job seriously and do your best on everything you write.