Quotes About Creativity

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.

I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only recognized much later, when the story and the characters have faded into darkness.

The guitar has shown us again and again: Three chords can rock the world.

If you pick up a guitar and it says, "Take me, I'm yours," then that's the one for you. —Frank Zappa

The idea came to me complete from start to finish – a most unusual occurrence, as any writer will tell you, for ordinarily a story has to be struggled with, changed around and mixed up.

Jimmy Stewart wrote to my father on December 31, 1946, "More important than anything, thank you for giving us that idea, which I think is the best one that anyone has had for a long time. It was an inspiration for everyone concerned with the picture to work in it, because everyone seemed to feel that the fundamental story was so sound and right, and that story was yours, and you should be justly proud of it.

By this time, I had become fond of the story that nobody wanted. I revised it again and had 200 twenty-four-page pamphlets printed at my own expense. I sent these out as Christmas cards for Christmas, 1943.

music gives me a structure to think about how the world could possibly be.

Imagination without logic is worthless. It conceives uncritically; pursued for its own sake, it but deforms the mind. Logic by itself is only futile; without imagination it can only reprove the proven and so discover nothing.

Religion in art was a subtle business, best handled indirectly.

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.

It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hand like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; whereas when I try to marshal them in open air, they fly away from me.

The vigor I lacked for physical activities became incandescent when, pen in hand, I filled those pages with invented stories. Sometimes they were intimately about me – family tales, parental exploits – sometimes they became horrific stories sprinkled with torture, death, and reunion: crazy games and tear-soaked sagas.

Life should be lived on the edge. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.

When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk!

Les limites existent seulement dans l'esprit de ceux qui ne savent pas rêver." (The limits exist only in the minds of those who can not dream)

Would anyone but a crazed bicephalous being, half engineer, half poet, willingly shackle himself to a venture of such magnitude? I am prisoner of my dream.

Les limites existent seulement dans l'esprit de ceux qui ne savent pas rêver.

Therefore my advice would encompass the following nine commandments: Do not get used to a sole body language. Do not establish a doctrine. Surprise yourself. Dream in a loud voice. Invent. Keep diligent, mysterious and secret. Have a just and generous heart. Compassion, yes; but no remorse. Acquire a thirst for excellence.

To fight adversity, to improvise, to solve problems, and to save the coup, I had gathered all my senses into unusual configurations, which made me grow wild and enhanced my perceptions.

Uomo dell'aria, tu colora col sangue le ore sontuose del tuo passaggio fra noi. I limiti esistono soltanto nell'anima di chi è a corto di sogni.

In perhaps 50 years, 60 years, we can finish completely this civilization, and offer to our children the possibility to invent a new story, a new poetry, a new romanticism.

My best office is my bed.

We all know the symbols for school: an apple, a red one-room schoolhouse, a bell. But those symbols never really worked for me.... If I had to pick one symbol that represents teaching, it wouldn't be any of these. It would be the bulletin board.