Quotes About Creativity

Not everybody has to sing the melody.

I tell people I was in the U.S. Army for three and a half years in WWII -- but what did I mainly do to beat the fascists? Play the banjo.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.

When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.

The music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.

Since so much of this music bubbled up urgently from my subconsious mind, I'm left to interpret it much like anyone else.

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.

People say, "You've gotta go on, man, otherwise all those kids, they'll be finished, they'll have nothing to live for." That's rock and roll!

if you don't like my trumpet go try blowing one of your own.

The Artist's Way

Writing touches the unconscious in a way that talking does not. It gets beyond the old, to the truth of the real stories within.

As I am writing this, my son's friend synchronistically tells him: "This Lego creature I made spreads brain attack and eats away at the person." I marvel at this synchronicity and think: "What a fitting image for the trauma-inducing parent".

the survivor learns to "follows his own bliss". He is freer to pursue activities and interests that naturally appeal to him. He evolves into his own sense of style. He may even feel emboldened to coif and dress himself without adherence to the standards of fashion. He may extend this freedom into his home décor. In this vein, I have seen many survivors discover their own aesthetic, as well as an increased appreciation of beauty in general.

2. SPIRITUAL NURTURANCE: Seeing and reflecting back to the child his or her essential worth, basic goodness and loving nature. Engendering experiences of joy, fun, and love to maintain the child's innate sense that life is a gift. Spiritual or philosophical guidance to help the child integrate painful aspects of life. Nurturing the child's creative self-expression. Frequent exposure to nature.

Another activity to keep your child from being stuck in the past is the drawing exercise below, designed to give your child a sense of the movement of time.

We can turn our earth into a barren, lifeless minor star spinning in space, waterless, with little or no atmosphere, with not even cockroaches left on it. To face this possibility and still behave with decency; to still create beautiful things as though they will last forever; to still make music and poetry and paint pictures; to still consciously cultivate the gentler, tender side of ourselves is to aspire to a grace which makes us more than the animals we surely are.

You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.

Art is art and life is life, but to live life artistically; that is the art of life

God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us.

Well, back to the old drawing board.

To fantasies', he said. 'Tell me about yours.' His eyes were a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were parted in a half smile.