Creative Soul Quotes & Sayings

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond. — Stefan Zweig

Your soul is infinitely creative. It is alive and expansive in nature. It is curious and playful, changing with the tides of time. — Debbie Ford

to be a poet means
to live
with a permanent wound

forever
susceptible
to either

the shade
of the sky

or someone's eyes. — Sanober Khan

The union and enlightenment experienced in Guitar Yoga will find natural expression in the music. Such music will be in accord with the Music of the Spheres, the fruit and flower and fragrance of the divine harmony of existence. The music will come from the heart, the soul, the very core of one's being. It will be the creative and sublime sound of the Gods, something from the beautiful Beyond, illuminating and inspiring, majestic and mystical. — David Cherubim

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

Do you have agendas for your children that are more important than the children themselves? Lost in the shuffle of uniforms, practices, games, recitals, and performances can be the creative and joyful soul of your child. Watch and listen carefully. Do they have time to daydream? From their dreams will emerge the practices and activities that will make self-discipline as natural as breathing. — William Martin

I think doing something creative is the most important thing to me, and I think it's probably just good for the soul for anyone, whatever it is. You don't have to be a film director - you can do gardening or something - but I think everyone needs to create something. — Ricky Gervais

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) — Brian McLaren

You're an infinite soul, a spark of Consciousness, and your perception is a creative decision you're continuously making. — Yol Swan

Soul, a particle of God, is blessed with the gift of creative imagination, which finds a solution for every problem. — Harold Klemp

We will attract potential partners who reflect back to us what we need to heal, balance and strengthen in ourselves- until we become whole. At that point, we can attract our twin flame or soul mate and enjoy a peaceful co- creative partnership that benefits all of mankind. — Dashama Konah Gordon

To voice something you're feeling and put observations into words with another person who is totally present is a creative act embodying soul and love. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely
whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else
it presents us with the gift of ourselves. — Aberjhani

For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given
in the breath of life
the individual soul, the stamp of approval as it were of the Creator; with the ability to know itself to be itself, and to make itself, as one with the Creative Forces
irrespective of other influences. — Edgar Cayce

Levine said that when we parent this way we deprive our kids of the opportunity to be creative, to problem solve, to develop coping skills, to build resilience, to figure out what makes them happy, to figure out who they are. In short, it deprives them of the chance to be, well, human. Although we overinvolve ourselves to protect our kids and it may in fact lead to short-term gains, our behavior actually delivers the rather soul-crushing news: "Kid, you can't actually do any of this without me. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

One of the tragic ironies of history is that such original and creative geniuses as Buddha and Jesus have been extolled as perfect patterns for all to emulate. In the very struggle to be like someone else rather than to be one's own true self, or to do one's own best in one's own environment, a child is in danger of losing the pearl that is really beyond price - the integrity of his (or her) own soul. — Sophia Lyon Fahs

Empathy is a creative act. It is the act of imagining ourselves not only in another's shoes, but perhaps inhabiting their very heart and soul. — Michele Jennae

the creative soul creates not children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, — Plato

True art is creation, and creation is beyond all theories. That is why I say to any beginner: Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide. — Carl Jung

Only a woman can carry in her body an eternal being which bears the very image of God. Only she is the recipient of the miracle of life. Only a woman can conceive and nurture this life using her own flesh and blood, and then deliver a living soul into the world. God has bestowed upon her alone a genuine miracle - the creation of life, and the fusing of an eternal soul with mortal flesh. This fact alone establishes the glory of motherhood.
Despite the most creative plans of humanist scientists and lawmakers to redefine the sexes, no man will ever conceive and give birth to a child. The fruitful womb is a holy gift given by God to women alone. This is one reason why the office of wife and mother is the highest calling to which a woman can aspire.
This is the reason why nations that fear the Lord esteem and protect mothers. They glory in the distinctions between men and women, and attempt to build cultures in which motherhood is honored and protected. — Douglas W. Phillips

Writing is not about the end product, yes that is extremely important. It's not even about the grammar or style you write in; style and grammar are in the eye of the beholder. With each person, someone will find problems so grammar and style are moot. Writing, truly diving in is about the creative process...discovering a newer side of yourself as you are writing; creating. The adventure from page one to being done is what it is about. Do you feel good with the end product? do you feel good half way through? The point to this is simple...feedback is vital to selling your work, paying attention to hurtful feedback can destroy your pursuit of your dreams. so write for you...sell to others but write from your soul. Whether it's fiction/faction/non fiction or somewhere in between if your heart and soul is not in it...you are not going to be happy with it. — Kyle Williamson

When we dream with the courage of our soul, we dream sacred dreams - fresh, creative, and able to infuse us with passion and courage to act. — Alberto Villoldo

When I create music, it is a reflection of my soul, my experiences in life and my relationships with other people and cultures. Psychology, and understanding who we are as people in this world, is present in almost every creative thought I have. — Yanni

Sometimes, you just have to clear your head and get out to see other things. It is very important to be nourished. I love to go to museums and galleries, I like to see theatre, film, dance - anything creative. It doesn't promise you inspiration, but it nourishes your creative soul, and that's good. — Marc Jacobs

Every art always deals with human beings, it is a human manifestation and presents human beings. To paraphrase Marx: "The root of all art is man." When the film close-up strips the veil of our imperceptiveness and insensitivity from the hidden little things and shows us the face of objects, it still shows us man, for what makes objects expressive are the human expressions projected on to them. The objects only reflect our own selves, and this is what distinguished art from scientific knowledge (although even the latter is to a great extent subjectively determined). When we see the face image of things, we do what the ancients did in creating gods in man's image and breathing a human soul into them. The close-ups of the film are the creative instruments of this mighty visual anthropomorphism. — Gerald Mast

Do solemnly swear to love, honor and obey my soul, my path to realization and relationship with a higher, deeper creative power, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, from now and forever more. — Alex Grey

If there is any intelligence guiding this universe, philosophy wishes to know and understand it and reverently work with it; if there is none, philosophy wishes to know that also, and face it without fear. If the stars are but transient coagulations of haphazard nebulae, if life is a colloidal accident, impersonally permanent and individually fleeting, if man is only a compound of chemicals, destined to disintegrate and utterly disappear, if the creative ecstasy of art, and the gentle wisdom of the sage, and the willing martyrdom of saints are but bright incidents in the protoplasmic pullulation of the earth, and death is the answer to every problem and the destiny of every soul
then philosophy will face that too, and try to find within that narrowed circle some significance and nobility for man. — Will Durant

I don't paint what people expect,
I paint what my heart yearns to express. — Nikki Rowe

It does not matter whether you paint, sculpt, or make shoes, whether you are a gardener, a farmer, a fisherman, a carpenter-it does not matter. What matters is, are you putting your very soul into what you are creating? Then your creative products have something of the quality of divine. — Rajneesh

You gave me a soul touch. A touch beyond physical. The most powerful of touch. I thought it was about you but I was wrong it was about me. In me. It took me a lifetime to realize it was me, not you. Thank you for showing me my soul. — Renae A. Sauter

If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected. — J.G. Holland

If your struggle with the conflicting parts of yourself is conscious, you are able to choose consciously the response that will create the karma that you desire. You will be able to bring to bear upon your decision an awareness of what lies behind each choice, and the consequences of each choice, and choose accordingly. When you enter into your decision-making dynamic consciously, you insert your will consciously into the creative cycle through which your soul evolves, and you enter consciously into your own evolution. — Gary Zukav

SANCTIFIED MATURED FERTILE UNIVERSAL CREATIVE SOUL MIRACLE WILL POWER WILL DEVISE DIVINE EXISTENCE BY SALVATION — Various

Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul. — Hans Hofmann

It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul. When it is ripped completely free of you, the wound must bleed for a while. How similar it is to letting go of a dream, your hope, or your heart's desire. You must open up and let it drain. — Lynn Cullen

She did a little soul-searching, the way one does on the big birthdays. She asked herself when was the last time she'd felt truly light, joyous, and - yes - creative in her own skin. To her shock, she realized that it had been decades since she'd felt that way. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. — Edgar Cayce

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not. — Mel Brooks

Playing shows is really fun. And writing music is really fun. But going on tour for a year is one of the more soul-crushing experiences you can have as a creative person. — Tunde Adebimpe

Creative person's spirit and soul dance with passion and imagination. — Pearl Zhu

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen, a kind soul and brilliant creative genius. Sad and shocking. You've touched us all. — Joe Zee

It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity. — Thomas Moore

The upholder of the cycles which sustain all Life is water. In every drop of water dwells a deity whom indeed we all serve. There also dwells Life, the soul of the primal substance - water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it, and in which it circulates. Every pulse beat arising through the interaction of will and resistance is indicative of creative work and urges us to care for those vessels, those primary and most vital structures, in which throbs the product of a dualistic power - Life — Viktor Schauberger

Yes, but I've already made my fortune in other things. (Solin)
Such as? (Geary)
Viagra. My brother learned to take a personal problem and profit by it. (Arik)
It's true. It pained me to see a man as young as Arik stricken with impotency. Therefore I had to do something to help the poor soul. But alas, there's nothing to be done for it. He's as flaccid as a wet noodle. (Solin)
How creative of you to project your problem onto me. But then, they say celibacy is enough to make a man lose all reason. Guess you're living proof, huh? (Arik) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I think good creative writing opens up space for people to come into. Let God reach out and touch the human soul. That's not my job. I get to be present and create as much space as I can ... That frees me up just to be creative in the way I want to be. — William P. Young

There is not ultimate breakthrough; what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint, because it is the journey into the soul. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

Now there is always a way out, there is always a way out through the creative will. It's just that we have become very passive because our culture has made us so. We have been fed by television and by passive entertainment to such a degree that the idea of the creative will is almost unknown now. When the young write me, they write to me as if the place of despair in which they are has absolutely no opening. And yet today when I heard the "Soul of a Bird," I thought that if one can escape from the concentration camp he certainly can escape from the narrowness of any life. — Anais Nin

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world. — Sanober Khan

Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a by-product of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous by-product. — Julia Cameron

Tortured Soul 101: The depth of despair one experiences during the creative process (as experienced say, in an abysmally blank page or canvas) is directly proportional to the scope and power of the work that emerges when it breaks. — F.T. McKinstry

You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you. — Anais Nin

We are giving the world back to man, and man back to himself. Man shall no longer be vile, but noble. We shall not destroy his mind in return for an immortal soul. Without a free, vigorous and creative mind, man is but an animal, and he will die like an animal, without any shred of a soul. We return to man his arts, his literature, his sciences, his independence to think and feel as an individual, not to be bound to dogma like a slave, to rot in his chains. — Irving Stone

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours. — Hermann Hesse

The struggle of the artist against the art-ideology, against the creative impulse and even against his own work also shows itself in his attitude towards success and fame; these two phenomena are but an extension, socially, of the process which began subjectively with the vocation and creation of the personal ego to be an artist. In this entire creative process, which begins with self-nomination as artist and ends in the fame of posterity, two fundamental tendencies - one might almost say, two personalities of the individual - are in continual conflict throughout: one wants to eternalize itself in artistic creation, the other in ordinary life - in brief, immortal man vs. the immortal soul of man. — Otto Rank

This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions. — Paul Brunton

Being surrounded by artistic and musical beauty soothes the soul, bringing both quiet calm and creative inspiration ... — Wayne D. Dosick

I can't think of anything more rewarding than being able to express yourself to others through painting. Exercising the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative; these things, to me, are truly the windows to your soul. — Bob Ross

He believed from the beginning that the heart and soul of an advertising agency is its creative work. — Doris Willens

It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it. — Maria Jeritza

Let a person only approach his or her own self with a deep respect, even reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth. Then we shall all be sound and free ... The creative spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which is our business to fulfill. A fate dictated from outside, from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate. — D.H. Lawrence

If you are working with authors, you are accepting a great responsibility and must tread very carefully. The author's work is a part of herself, a creative endeavor she has poured her heart and soul into. Protecting and nurturing that work and the author is part of the job of a publisher. — Terena Scott

KNOWING SELF SOUL GOD CREATIVE ESSENCE TASTE LEADS TO MATURED GLANCE OF MYSTERIES OF NATURE AND UNIVERSAL FUTURE ACTIVITY NEXT. — Various

If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning ... The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living. — Marion Woodman

The forms of mathematics, the harmonies of music, the motions of the planets, and the gods of the mysteries were all essentially related for Pythagoreans, and the meaning of that relation was revealed in an education that culminated in the human soul's assimilation to the world soul, and thence to the divine creative mind of the universe. — Richard Tarnas

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

You know you possess the soul of an artist when, each time you sit down to create, the whole universe lays itself at your feet. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

We were weirdos, Fiona and I. Creative minds like ours were the minds of aliens. And the soul-suckers, the plagiarists, the malicious people like Charlie? They were sapping us. It was our mission to get away from them. — Aaron Starmer

Is your life beautiful? Do you live in surroundings that you have made beautiful through your own unique, creative ideas? To expect and lovingly require beauty to be apparent in all areas of your life is to be deeply loving to yourself, your soul, your world, and shows reverence to God and all of life. There is always something beautiful to be found, right where you are, if you will look for it. Concentrate your thoughts on the good, the beautiful, and the true things in life. — John Templeton

You must study the Masters but guard the original style that beats within your soul and put to sword those who would try to steal it. — El Greco

In the midst of our daily lives, we must find the juice to nourish our creative souls. — SARK

The love of husband and wife, which is creative of new human life, is a marvellously personal sharing in the creative love of God who brings into being the eternal soul that comes to every human being with the gift of human life. — Vincent Nichols

There is a creative solution to every problem. Every possibility holds the promise of abundance. — Deepak Chopra

The truth is that solitude is the creative condition of genius, religious or secular, and the ultimate sterilising of it. No human soul can long ignore "the giant agony of the world" and live, except indeed the mollusc life, a barnacle upon eternity. — Helen Waddell

Every breathing soul longs to overcome. — Ted Dekker

If you love beauty, it's because beauty lives within you. If you love art, it's because you are creative. If it wakes up your heart, a receptor for it already exists within you. Your soul is drawn to the things that will help you unfold your most glorious expression. Give in. — Cynthia Occelli

I believe eros dwells in our innermost being as the spirit of creative expression. To me, eros is a great path that we must walk, a song we listen to, a game that we hunt and enjoy, a lesson to learn, a garden where flowers bloom, a prodigious puzzle to solve, a book to read, a chapter to write, and an ocean to swim in. That's what eros is to me. — Salil Jha

Mama had an appreciation of the language. She taught me a love of words, of how they should be used and how they can fill a creative soul with a passion and lead to a life's work. — Lewis Grizzard

I've taken Saturdays to be the day I pull back completely. I do things that are more creative, and I've actually found that helps me when I get back into work to be more thoughtful, and I truly believe that feeding your creative soul is really important to being more analytical. — Padmasree Warrior

Soul-the spiritual principle, the creative spark of God-cannot work if you panic. Anxiety shuts down the creative centers. When you can't think, whatever you try to do becomes one blunder piled upon another. If you slow down, the spiritual principle can begin working through you so that you can figure out the solution to the problem that is bothering you. — Harold Klemp

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ... Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you. — Brenda Ueland

I remember the first time we stood in this spot. We were on the deck of a boat in the middle of what was then Penny's Bay, envisioning what could be, what would be, what will be. Six years later, through our dream partnership with Hong Kong government, the creative dream is now a reality. Hong Kong Disneyland stands before us as a living symbol of the creativity and imagination that are the heart and soul of Disney. — Michael Eisner

There occurred within a causal radius of Brandon Station one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of the First Cause. In the soul of the great blazing sun there were complicated superhuman vibrations [connected] ... with the feelings of a few intellectual sages who had enough imagination to recognise the conscious personality of this fiery orb as it flung far and wide its life-giving magnetic forces. Roaring, cresting, heaving, gathering, mounting, advancing, receding, the enormous fire-thoughts of this huge luminary surged relentlessly to and fro, evoking a turbulent aura of psychic activity. — John Cowper Powys

Creativity is basically a feminine process. I'm convinced that we have in our soul, everybody, this masculine side and this feminine side. So at the end of the day, you always use this feminine creative energy to write or to do any type of art or creativity. So if I see that my protagonist is feminine, it's not more difficult, no. And even when my protagonist is masculine, I'm writing from using this feminine energy. — Paulo Coelho

There are dead thoughts and there are living thoughts. A dead thought has been compared to a stone which one may plant in the soil. Nothing will come out. A living thought is like a seed. In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. It may become a part of one's knowledge; it will not come forth as a creative force. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Seed for Contemplation:
Creative people who cherish the gift of life often slip into the secret chambers of the creative mind. Their solutions are well-rounded, more sensible than those of people who rely solely upon reason as their mainstay. Gratitude unseals fountains of creativity, because a grateful person is relaxed. This allows him to take stock of his circumstances with an objective mind. A creative person often gets three-dimensional answers to his problems. - , — Harold Klemp

Yes, you are creative and in slow, languid times, creativity peers out of your soul like a field mouse from its burrow at night. — Michele Jennae

I learned that our deepest need is to overcome our aloneness and our separateness. We seek to escape from separateness in various ways. We seek conformity, mistaking it for union. This is a soul-crushing way to exist. Or we seek union through orgiastic states - drugs, alcoholism, overwork - or through creative activities. But the ultimate escape from separateness is through interpersonal union. — Joseph Jaworski

If he [the Artist] were to take up the pen it would be ... to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order ... to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life. — Witold Gombrowicz

One of the things that's been nice about my career is that I've been able to do so many different things, and variety keeps your creative soul fulfilled. I'm constantly looking to find new things to do. It's just project to project for me. You never know where the next thing's going to come from. — Drew Goddard

I really believe deep in my soul that we're going to have to step up and face these challenges and be tough and pull together and unify and be creative and be willing to sacrifice. — Zach Wamp

Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted.
This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometimes people wonder or worry whether people will like or approve of their creative expression. It's none of your business. It's your business to stay present and focused for the work of your deepest dreams. It might look crooked or strange, or be very odd-but if it delights you, then it is yours, and will find it's way into other hearts. — SARK

I'm not reinventing myself. I'm finding myself. There's a difference! — Michele Jennae

Live in the very soul of expectation of better things, in the conviction that something large, grand, and beautiful will await you if your efforts are intelligent, if your mind is kept in a creative condition and you struggle upward to your goal. — Orison Swett Marden

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action.102 — Pope John Paul II

The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.
... I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of teh work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.
As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss. — Madeleine L'Engle

Darkness can be funny. It can be quirky. There are different ways that that stuff comes out as a creative person. But the actual conflicted, twisted, decaying, rotting soul? That's not me. No more. — Nikki Sixx

The moments of nature's universal, triumphant silence had come, those minutes when the creative mind works harder, poetic thoughts seethe more ardently, the heart's passion blazes more brightly and its longing aches more painfully, the grain of criminal thought ripens in a cruel soul more imperturbably and powerfully. — Ivan Goncharov

I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and hour your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit. — C. G. Jung

The more the poet grows, the deeper the level of creative intuition descends into the density of his soul. Where formerly he could be moved to song, he can do nothing now, he must dig deeper. — Jacques Maritain

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ] — Jim Jarmusch