Best 241 quotes in «creative process quotes» category

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can." [Keynote Address, University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012)]

The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem - the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say - exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself - soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.

There are always messages, even enigmas to be searched, mysteries to be solved in all of my books. I like to puzzle readers, but I do not make so to the point of being so complex that they will lose interest in the plot. And that for me is the essence of every great literature around the world, and that’s been so for ages. (....)Some were inpired by real life characters, some other books I wrote are hybrid fiction/non-fiction, so I pretty much get inspired by people who have lived, and even who are still breathing among us… so don’t get discouraged if I didn’t mention your personality traits yet. I might even have your name over my books, I must some day…

There is a juiciness to creativity, a succulence that comes up from within, a sensuality which both produces and is soothed by the act and product of creativity. Creativity is pleasing to us on a deep level. Be it the feel of clay in our hands, the colors that make us feel alive as we knit or sew, the meaning that we find in the words that we write, the energizing feel of movement as we dance and the music moves through our bodies. Taking part in creativity helps us to be more fully alive on every level, it asks that we engage with life in a visceral, and interactive way.

There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go, thinking vaguely that it will always be given to us to try again. Thus works of art, and thus whole lives of men, are spoilt by blinking and moving quickly on. I often found that I had ideas for stories, but by the time I had thought them out in detail they seemed to me hardly worth writing, as if I had already 'done' them: not because they were bad, but because they already belonged to the past and I had lost interest. My thoughts were soon stale to me. Some things I ruined by starting them too soon. Others by thinking them so intensely in my head that they were over before they began. Projects would change in a second from hazy uncommitted dreams into unsalvageable ancient history. Whole novels existed only in their titles.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising." [The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest, May/June 2009)]

The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. (Interview with Paris Review, 1958)

There’s no matter here you can’t re-matter into love.

The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.

The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model.

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit... I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it... I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before... The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That's where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started... In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

This is the crux of being a Creative Mother. It is more than how many jumpers you have knitted, or having an exhibition in a fancy gallery, or a bookshelf of your own books. It is about the act of living authentically whilst honoring your mother self and creative self. About saying yes to life, every part of your life, and finding how to weave them all together.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

to be a poet means to live with a permanent wound forever susceptible to either the shade of the sky or someone's eyes.

Too many people have either let their creative license expire or its been suspended.

Too many peoples creative licenses have been either suspended or completely revoked. Gotta renew those licenses!

To plunge one thing into the shape or nature of another is a fundamental gesture of creative insight, part of how we make for ourselves a world more expansive, deft, fertile, and startling in richness.

We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.

Turn those deep feelings and obsessions of your heart into captivating pieces of literature.

Valoare au doar ideile după care ai umblat.

To write is to feel the dance of your soul swirling in a dream that drips imagination onto paper.

To write with truth, I’ve been known to slow dance my words over graves of buried prayers, to drink my words under the shadow of my grandfather’s whiskey bottles, to lift my words from under the gaze of my daddy’s gentle eyes. I’ve had to write from the seeding syllables of my gardens, from the ammunition of my ancestors’ battlegrounds, and from the misery of my families’ tattered Bibles. I’ve pulled stories from the soil of my homeplace, from the juice stains of freshly-picked blackberries, and from the bottom of my bare feet. I write with the barbed-wire nouns and plural verbs of my mistakes, with the cast iron consonants and silent sugary vowels of my mother’s kitchen. But in the end, the only thing that matters is that I write.

Vronsky’s interest in art and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had sufficient taste for art to be unable to finish his picture. He ceased painting it because he was dimly conscious that its defects, little noticeable at first, would become striking if he went on.

We love to learn because learning feels good. It both satisfies and stimulates curiosity. Reading a good book, having a meaningful conversation, listening to great music—just doing these things make us happy. They have no extrinsic purpose. To give them one takes away from their joy.

We can imagine how to create and be creative on a beach in a cosmic sky. No grain of sand is merely just sandy; with imagination at hand the sand can become whatever you fancy.

We can't always rely on politicians to change things for us in the world, we need artists who create things.

We are witnessing is the rise of those forms of popular culture that office workers can produce and consume during the scattered, furtive shards of time they have at their disposal in workplaces where even when there’s nothing for them to do, they still can’t admit it openly.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind." (Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

When dreams come true creativity becomes art.

Whenever new knowledge causes you to question your previous assumptions, the stage is set for creative transformation.

[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an 'idealistic' position, as if I were saying that the characters have an autonomous life and the author, in a kind of trance, makes them behave as they themselves direct him. That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers. The fact is that the characters are obliged to act according to the laws of the world in which they live. In other words, the narrator is the prisoner of his own premises.

When we have the courage to claim space for ourselves. When we risk creativity. When we relish our sensuality. When we honor our lives and their experiences as valuable. When we create from a female body, expressing ourselves in a woman’s voice, using a woman’s language. We begin to bloom.

When someone asks me what a song is about, it’s like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song.

When the lyrical muse sings the creative pen dances.

Writers think with their soul and draft from their heart

Words are the residue that I was there, that I loved my wife, that I kissed my children goodnight, that I sacrificed my life for them. Words are a curse. Life is a curse. Words escape life. Life escapes words. What in God's name am I? How does someone name a God? What is it to name yourself?

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it’s utterly glorious." National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk

Writing is like shadow boxing. Editing is when the shadows fight back.

When you're young artist, it's really important to like pay attention to what you're doing and be honest with yourself and in the creative proccess.

Wherever there is fear, there is creative treasure. Something important lies buried.

Why start if you are going to do a half-assed job anyway?

Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English." [The Instrumentalities of the Night: An Interview with Glen Cook, The SF Site, September 2005]

Writing a story is like going on a date—you will spoil it if you aren't living in the moment.

Write your story before it dies one single breath at time. Nobody cares if is the truth as long as it really happened.

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it." [Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." (Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)