Quotes About Creativity

Emily Dickinson reminds us what it's like to be alive. And when she does—she takes our breath away.

Karen Dandurand's view that Dickinson did not publish because poetry to her was never finished. She looked upon her verse as constantly in play and the work of a lifetime. Her attitude is reminiscent of Paul Valéry's assessment: "A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Emily could hardly get up in the morning without metaphors and images flooding her mind. Often her letters to Austin took on the appearance of a composition exercise, as if she were trying to freeze a moment in words and capture not only the look, but also the feel of an instant.

She wanted her poems to translate all she saw and heard and felt, and not be any earthly thing. What she aimed for was evanescence like the brilliance of lightning, the flash of truth, or a transport so swift it felt like flight.

While Emily's verse always drew from more than the literal details of her life, impaired vision made her rely on her imagination even more. If she could not see distinctly or at all, she would have to tap into her metaphorical reserve. She may have found that imagination gave her a richer sense of perception than what she could discern from her eyes.

Seek art from every time and place, in any form, to connect with those who really move you.

Can I tell you what I'm doing? I'm in search of a new story for myself. I need something to do that gets me excited in the morning and wears me out by bedtime.

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.

She tried, leaning back and closing her eyes, to put in order what she had seen, heard, and what she had known before. She wanted to place her knowledge in paragraphs ( a good opening sentence? she thought), so that it would be easy to handle when she came to write it. But it did not fit in paragraphs and she could not see it, plain and informative, colourful but unimpassioned, on a page. There was no beginning, no middle, no end.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of a miracle.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there id only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.

I never set out to create a technique. I started out on the floor to find myself, to find what the body could do, and what would give me satisfaction - emotionally, dramatically and bodily. But I did not ever dream of establishing a technique. I still can't believe anything like that happened.

Dancing is very like poetry.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

No artist is pleased.... there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.