Quotes About Creativity

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

I do not seek. I find.

To draw, you must close your eyes and sing

Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, last words

My mother said to me, if you go into the military, you will become a general. If you go into the clergy, you will become Pope. Instead, I became an artist, and I am Piccaso.

Los libros se hacen con lo que se tiene y no necesariamente con lo que se quiere.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

The best thing you can do for someone is make them a beautiful plate of food. How else can you invade someone's body without actually touching them?

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Follow your muses instead of trying to solve the social wounds of your adolescence. We've lost a whole generation of people who are dealing with their environment by retreating, by going into therapy. So instead, you go to open mic at a crummy tavern and perform your art. Rather than being introspective and constantly working on your shortcomings, get angry, get excited, get social.

when it comes to being a writer: getting out of your own way, and getting rid of the countless negative thoughts that tell you what a hopelessly uninteresting specimen of humanity you are.

There is only one rule on this Wild Playground. . . . 'Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun.'" — HAFIZ, PERSIAN POET

I have always believed that if I pay strict attention while I am out in the physical world—and for me that often meant the natural world—the physical world will give me everything I need to tell my stories" (78). —Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

I believe—like religion—that the glimmer, the metaphor, if you will, knows a great deal more than I do. And if I stay out of its way, it will reveal itself to me. I will become not so much its keeper as its conduit, and I will pass its wisdom on to the reader, without actually getting in its way" (79).

mantra that "I can write through anything" to

An artist has to stick true to their own beliefs and be a pioneer. They're not necessarily pleasing a studio or a government or anybody else but just being honest and raw and expressing themselves in a beautiful way. That's not always what people want to hear or expect to see.

Rock stars are like prophets. There's something about somebody who can get up on a stage and sing. And then when they write you songs, forget it, okay?

My sons think it's a fireman's pole, but I forgot to cut a hole through the ground into the kitchen.

A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks. Music is in our hearts from the beginning.

There is a great deal of solemn discussion about The Novel. In fact, every novel is an answer to the ancient plea, 'Tell us a story.

November 18. . . I dig musicians, I feel they have the most to offer me mentally and emotionally because they think basically along the same lines that I do; extremely creative people. Music is Life. As Captain Beefheart once said 'God is a perfect musical note.