Creativity Quotes

"If you want to work on your art, work on your life first." "Necessity is the mother of invention" "Make it new." "Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one." "Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but equations for the human emotions." "The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth." "Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music." "It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse" "The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say 'I read, therefore it writes'" "Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one's own culture" "Express yourself, don't repress yourself." "The best ideas come from examining problems that are interesting to you." "All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate." "Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities" "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen" "The power of a writer is that he is a powerful figure in the world" "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure" "We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out" "Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things" "Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down"