Quotes About Creativity

So, in a fit of pique, I came up with the silliest thing I could think of, and handed the book in under the title "Bowling for Dragons

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.

I tried to imagine a dragon eating apples and failed.

Patricia C. Wrede

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

I need solitude for my writing; not like a hermit—that wouldn't be enough—but like a dead man.

I already know (or believe—which comes to the same thing in my Catholic worldview) that daydreaming doesn't make things up. It sees things. Claims things, twirls them around, takes a good look. Possesses them. Embraces them.Makes something of them. Makes sense. Or music. How restful it is, how full of motion. My first paradox.

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.

The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

Today's collaborative efforts often are negotiations rather than new creations born out of what has most heart and most meaning. To practice courageous collaboration is to commit ourselves to something that is worthy of our whole selves. And, we invite others to show up in the same way. From that new place different possibilities emerge.

I've often wondered what would happen if, in the interest of public service, advertising companies lent out their best copywriters for a year or so to team up with teachers in designing educational materials.

You have a story in there, Lucy," she said, touching my head. "Or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word," she whispered.

It's WA today, Minna," called Orson from across the room, Orson's name for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Orson played second violin with a sloppy serenity, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue, his bowing long and sweeping and beautiful even when out of tune. "If you must make a mistake," he had quoted, "make it a big one." Was it Heifetz who had said it? Perlman? Zukerman maybe?

Miss Skylark once said it's heroic to make something beautiful out of a blank page," I say. "With art or words.

That night Aunt Mattie gave me a box wrapped in bright paper. "What is it?" I asked. "Open it," she said. "I made it for you. There's so much fuss for Anna that I was afraid you'd get lost." Caleb put his arm around me. "Cassie? Cassie's never lost. Except maybe in her head," he said.

Out of our writer mouths Will come clouds Rising to the sky Dropping rain words below. And when the clouds leave The sun will shine down word After word After word Planting our stories in the earth. —Russell

You will have a story in there. . . or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word.

I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever.

Writing... is ... brave. You are brave.

Poets and children," said Sylvan. "We are the same really. When you can't find a poet, find a child. Remember that.

This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.