Quotes About Creativity

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the edit." [ Ten rules for writing fiction (part two) , The Guardian, 20 February 2010]

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.

It is better to write a bad first draft than no first draft at all.

My skin is hard when it comes to my music. But with my movies, I'm still a virgin in a lot of ways. I'm not used to being shot down for no reason.

I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious.

Spiritual traditions and teachings have all emphasized that each one of us has a unique purpose and mission in this life to unfold and fulfill, and that this is our work. Our work has to do with purifying and awakening our consciousness, contributing creatively to our community, and being the voice and hands that confer blessings on others. As we discover our calling, and live it as fully as we can, we discover joy and meaning, and our life becomes precious and filled with blessings.

If you would ask my mom what books I liked growing up, I liked Dr. Seuss.

If Apple's a technology company in the music industry, why can't somebody in the music industry make technology?

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate!

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

In art one idea is as good as another.

Creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy.

Applaus," zei hij, "wat een vreselijke manier om een kunstenaar te belonen. Hij heeft zich ingespannen de mooiste muziek te zingen of te spelen en het brengt zijn publiek tot niets anders dan het maken van het eentonigste lawaai dat er bestaat.

Ik schrijf, hoewel ik weet dat men alleen één woord schrijven kan door er tienduizend over te slaan. Maar deze tienduizend blijven zweven als modder in een glas vuil water. Kijkt men er boven in, dan verduisteren zij het neerslag dat op die bodem ligt. Ik zie wat ik geschreven heb alleen maar door de troebele mist van dat wat geen gestalte heeft aangenomen. Begrijpt men nu, waarom het door mijzelf beschreven papier zulk een verontreinigde indruk op mij maakt?

Literatuur is de neerslag of het verslag van een geestelijk avontuur in een taal die eigen, levend en origineel is.