Creative Words Quotes & Sayings

Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator's mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here's spring. — Richard Powers

And doing so you can recreate yourself and you can also come up with something that is not only original and creative and artistic, but also maybe even decent, or moral if I can use words like that, or something that's like basically good. — Lester Bangs

You're not required to save the world with your creativity. Your art not only doesn't have to be original, in other words, it also doesn't have to be important. For example, whenever anyone tells me that they want to write a book in order to help other people I always think 'Oh, please don't. Please don't try to help me.' I mean it's very kind of you to help people, but please don't make it your sole creative motive because we will feel the weight of your heavy intention, and it will put a strain upon our souls. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Poetry helps deliver messages. Poetry is an art; play with the words, the rhymes and your emotions. Experiment; discover yourself. This is exactly what I expect from you. Be creative, let the words guide you, never hold back, write as it comes, and edit later. — Jude Ouvrard

Nothing can be imagined, nothing can be visualized in our minds, until we have a word for it. Therefore, when I give myself to the free flow of any words that trip off my tongue without predetermination, I am tapping into the primal creative power at the heart of the cosmos. Or maybe I'm just a bullshit artist. — Dean Koontz

Managing the power of choice, with all its creative and spiritual implications, is the essence of the human experience. All spiritual teachings are directed toward inspiring us to recognize that the power to make choices is the dynamic that converts our spirits into matter, our words into flesh. Choice is the process of creation itself. — Caroline Myss

But first the student must learn to think creatively, to innovate, and to do the things that will most quickly seek out the enemy's weak spots and undo him. Learning to think in that fashion is fundamental. That is what this course is about: the fundamentals. Once these fundamentals are learned, that is, once the student has begun to think clearly about how best to undo his adversary, once he has been rewarded in the classroom or the field for creative thought, the careful weighing of alternatives and risks followed by boldness in decision-making, he will then be ready to study definitions, control measures and formats. He will grasp their meaning more rapidly, for he will have a context in which to place them. They will be more than mere words and symbols. — William S Lind

My robust lexicon notwithstanding, I struggle to find the right words to describe just how much I despise, hate, abhor, revile, detest and categorically abominate anything to do with home maintenance. While cooking strikes me as an essentially creative act, cleaning seems little more than an exercise in decay management, enough to trigger an existential crisis each time the ring around the toilet bowl reappears. — Rachel Held Evans

One thing about creative work is that it's never done. In different words, every person we interviewed said that it was equally true that they had worked every minute of their careers, and that they had never worked a day in all their lives. They experienced even the most focused immersion in extremely difficult tasks as a lark, an exhilarating and playful adventure. — Todd Henry

I wasn't necessarily frustrated in Fall Out Boy, but there were things that didn't get satisfied, desires left wanting. We didn't all meet on the same kind of music. When bands break up, there are all these buzz words that get tossed around to maintain a front for the audience, but in this case there literally were creative differences. — Patrick Stump

As long as religious people are well dressed, well fed, and well cared for, words about being in solidarity with the poor will remain pious words more likely to evoke good feelings than creative actions. As long as we are doing well what others are doing better and more efficiently, we can hardly expect to be considered the salt of the earth or the light of the world. In short, as long as we avoid displacement, we will miss the compassionate life to which our Lord calls us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

And I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I'd like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen. — Charlotte Eriksson

Haiku are meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader ... to light the spark that triggers creative rumination ... They act as literary manifestations ... visions of nature's seasonal modulations ... They're emotionally tinged words, barely perceptible sensory flickers ... literary etchings of lucid visions transposed into the minds of its readers ... They're meant to act as sensory catalysts ... like the passing of a penciled baton laid out upon a piece of paper that a reader might grasp for in their mind's eye ... all of which prompts the reader to continue exploring the sensory experience elicited from the writers pen ... This is how the literary sketching of poets are intended to function ... as creative muses with which readers can draw from and viscerally apply to their own artistic idioms ... from that lucid space within their heads ... where their minds eye can spark their own creative visions"

Bukusai Ashagawa — Bukusai Ashagawa

What if, as an act of worship, creating something meant healing and restoration took place instead of pain and frustration? — Michelle Dennis Evans

Words like "Society" and "State" are so concretized that they are almost personified. In the opinion of the man in the street, the "State," far more than any king in history, is the inexhaustible giver of all good; the "State" is invoked, made responsible, grumbled at, and so on and so forth. Society is elevated to the rank of a supreme ethical principle; indeed, it is even credited with positively creative capacities. — C. G. Jung

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh. — David Foster Wallace

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim. — Steve Almond

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

Words accrue and lose meaning through a semantic mobility dependent on the community in which they thrive, and these meanings cannot be divorced from bodily sensation and emotion. Slang emerges among a circle of speakers. Irony requires double consciousness, reading one meaning and understanding another. Elegant prose involves a feeling for the rhythms and the music of sentences, a product of the sensual pleasure a writer takes in the sounds of words and the varying metric beats of sentences. Creative translation must take all this into account. If a meaning is lost in one sentence, it might be gained or added to the next one. Such considerations are not strictly logical. They do not involve a step-by-step plan but come from the translator's felt understanding of the two languages involved. Rodney — Siri Hustvedt

El duende is literally the goblin wind or force behind a person's actions and creative life, including the way they walk, the sound of their voice, even the way they lift their little finger. It is a term used in flamenco dance, and is also used to describe the ability to "think" in poetic images. Among Latina curanderas who recollect story, it is understood as the ability to be filled with spirit that is more than one's own spirit. Whether one is the artist or whether one is the watcher, listener, or reader, when el duende is present, one sees it, hears it, reads it, feels it underneath the dance, the music, the words, the art; one knows it is there. When el duende is not present, one knows that too. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality. — Alfred North Whitehead

Your reactions, whether positive or negative, are creative of future circumstances. In your imagination, you can hear words congratulating you on getting a wonderful new job. That imaginal act now goes forward and you will encounter this pleasant experience in the future. — Neville Goddard

When I read students' attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect. — Julius Lester

I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time. — Anna Deavere Smith

Q: Where and when do you do your writing?
A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules ... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don't know where I'm going with an idea, I'm lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the "creative moment." I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What's the American phrase? If it ain't broke ... — Zadie Smith

The symbolic evidence of women's invisibility in the human race is most clear perhaps in her suppression, her camouflage, her negation even in language. Women are subsumed, excised, erased by male pronouns, by male terminology, by male prayers about brotherhood and brethren, even and always by exclusively male images of God. The tradition that will call God spirit, rock, key door, wind, and bird will never ever call God mother. So much for the creative womb of God; so much for "I am who am." So much for "Let us make human beings in our own image, male and female, let us make them." What kind of spirituality is that? To take the position that using two pronouns for the human race is not important in a culture that has thirty words for car, multiple words for flowers, and dozens of words for dog breeds is to say that women are not important. — Joan D. Chittister

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment. — P.J. Harvey

Eminem's rhyme patterns are super dope and he can squeeze a million words in a couple bars. Crazy creative. His voice changes alot though. — Chamillionaire

She soon learned, though, that giving weight to other people's opinions was creative nihilism; it was like being banished from the Land of No Words and exiled to the Land of All Bullshit. — Stephanie Kallos

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way, you can write three or five words without being "creative" and before you know it, you're writing. — Cory Doctorow

Last words? I'm sure it has been an eventful journey. Someone will want to make your eulogy creative, I have no doubt. I can only wonder what will happen to the mind of the person that is forcefully debugged with their consciousness this deep into the WoAnLiNe. It's going to make an interesting case study for some boring old zero that has that kind of time. I should erase your Animus while I'm at it. It would keep these sorts of problems from happening in the future, troublemaker. — Brandon R. Chinn

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books. — Stephen King

Anna told me I would understand about boys one day.
She said that everything would change and I would look at them differently, assess their bodies and their words, the way their eyes moved when they talked to me. She said I'd not only want to answer them but that I'd learn how, knowing which words to use, how to give meaning to a pause.
Then a man took her.
A man took her before I learned any of these things. He took her and kept her for a while, put things inside of her. Of course the obvious thing, but also some others, like he was curious if they'd fit. Then he got bored. Then he got creative.
Then my sister was gone and I thought: I understand about boys now.
And she was right. Everything did change. I look at them differently and I assess their bodies and watch their eyes and weigh their words.
But not in the way she meant. — Mindy McGinnis

To me, music and songwriting is ... part of the intriguing thing is the creative process; you know, the creative thought process. Relying on that ... there is some sort of inspiration there and you can't always put your finger on where it comes from. So, it's always been important for me to have my own thing and, even though I'm inspired by and influenced by many different musicians and styles of music, I was very determined early on to have my own thing. So when I sit down to write I don't necessarily have a particular narrative or message in mind. I'm interested in language and in words. — Page Hamilton

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat
patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well
the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell."
Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot
death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings
a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater. — Arundhati Roy

She hit us," the woman shrieked. That was the gist of it anyway. There were a lot of unladylike words that began with "F," with various "C" words thrown in for leavening.
...
"Ben's better," I murmured. "He's more creative when he swears."
"He does it in that English accent, which is too cool. — Patricia Briggs

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don't view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it's a rare commodity attained through dumb luck ... .It's possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition ... .the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident. — Rob Brezsny

The three creative prototypes, the scientist, the artist, and the saint, know instinctively, without the help of any mere philosopher, that each must obey an absolute rule of conduct. Three words established and hallowed by usage express the divinities, the values, the supreme aims served respectively by these three kinds of men with an undivided loyalty: truth for the scientist; beauty for the artist; goodness for the saint. The discussion on what these words mean will never end. We must be content with taking note of their clarity as symbols, and of the singular force which animates them and makes of them powerful poles of attraction. — Salvador De Madariaga

[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. — Umberto Eco

An imperfect creative expression is much more sensible and creative than a grammatically perfect expression without an iota of sense and value in it. — Michael Bassey Johnson

If I dismiss the ordinary - waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life ... To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories - to know that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing - is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don't know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring. — Dani Shapiro

Today we are going to talk about words. You know, words are containers for power. They carry creative or destructive power. They carry positive or negative power. We can choose our words and we should do it carefully. — Joyce Meyer

poetry. i am not writing it.
(make way for me please)
it is my skin. dripping with light. — Sanober Khan

The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. — Stephen King

When I know I'm going to work on a cover, I practically run to the computer! After working with words for so long, it's lovely to do something that's creative yet also the professional equivalent of scribbling in your own coloring book. — Teresa Medeiros

Your Words Are Vital, They Rule You And You Rule With Them Therefore, Speak Creative Words Always! — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words. — Charlie Haden

Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings. — Robert Genn

Within the universe's intention and its unique design around relationship, we find that the focal point of the universe, the motive of the universe, is love. God created life so that we could know love. Everything God does is an expression of his love. It is neither trite nor superficial that the Scriptures summarize this in three simple words: "God is love." It is critical to understand this because, if we are to reclaim our role in the creative process and express our lives as masterful works of art, we, too, must be sure that our motivation is the expansion of love. — Erwin Raphael McManus

In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."
[Letter to Joan Lancaster, 26 June 1956] — C.S. Lewis

Arts education is a big part of building a 21st century creative mind, and I think that we have let way too many kids lose their way by not drawing in their young minds with music, dance, painting and the other various ways we can express those things we do not have words for. — Heather Watts

Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words. — Joanna Newsom

Art and poetry cannot do without one another. Yet the two words are far from being synonymous. By Art I mean the creative or producing, work-making activity of the human mind. By Poetry I mean, not the particular art which consists in writing verses, but a process both more general and more primary: that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self which is a kind of divination (as was realized in ancient times; the Latin vates was both a poet and a diviner). Poetry, in this sense, is the secret life of each and all of the arts. — Jacques Maritain

The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible. The absolute is only attainable through faith and in the creative act. — Andrei Tarkovsky

George Carlin is brilliant with words, and Johnny Winters is very creative. It's taking something common and drawing out the humor, being clever with words. — Bill Cosby

Art is a creative effort of which the wellsprings lie in the spirit, and which brings us at once the most intimate self of the artist and the secret concurrences which he has perceived in things by means of a vision or intuition all his own, and not to be expressed in ideas and in words-expressible only in the work of art. — Jacques Maritain

What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again. — R.M. Engelhardt

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. — Lucy H. Pearce

Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone's words and breathe life into them. — Patty Duke

Technically my boss, Laynie's most notable trait was her ability to focus intently on a project until it was completed. In other words, she was a little obsessive. It was actually a great characteristic when it came to work. She always thought of everything, never missing a detail. Her brain worked on overdrive, and while she liked to talk incessantly about business, her passion and creative ideas made sure the subject never grew old. — Laurelin Paige

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith
of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you
a metaphysical buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else's words. The faith is in yourself, in your own 'buddha nature.' You too can be a buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way. — Martine Batchelor

A cook is creative, marrying ingredients in the way a poet marries words. — Roger Verge

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words. — P.D. James

My experience protesting with Mojave Dolphins, and the other wonderful animal activists, can be described in a few words: inspiring, motivational and purposeful. The execution of the protests is incredible; the signs are amazing, creative and eye catching. You can really feel the unity in the group, running like a well oiled machine towards the goal of liberating our captive animal friends. — Camille

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die. — Alan Moore

Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative. — Michel Faber

The fascination of somebody with original creative gifts is something that's always drawn me. I get attached to them, but I can't call it being in love, because the words are so debased. — Emma Tennant

Our words have creative power. With our words, we can speak blessings over our future or we can speak negative things over our future. — Joel Osteen

It's like picking up a piece of writing from years ago. You feel the tiniest stab of recollection when you discover it, but mostly you are in awe of how it was you who wrote down these words and felt something so creative in that moment. — Rakesh Satyal

A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell who lived and died in the same century as Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatazoa attacking an ovum. — Dan Simmons

There is people who make stuff with words. There is people who make stuff with programs. And I really believe that that whole creative culture, people didn't realize how creative programming is. And anybody who's done it of course knows that not only is it creative, but it's incredibly absorbing. — Tim O'Reilly

The creative act of the artist lifts him above himself by demanding full surrender. No one puts words on paper or paint on canvas, doubting. If one doubts, one does so five minutes later ... — Czeslaw Milosz

Kind words are a creative force, a power that concurs in the building up of all that is good, and energy that showers blessings upon the world. — Lawrence G. Lovasik

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw? — P. J. O'Rourke

Here's what I learned: First thing in the morning, before I have drowned myself in coffee, while I still have that sleepy brain I used to believe was useless - that is the best brain for creative writing. Words come pouring out easily while my head still feels as if it is full of ground fog, wrapped in flannel and gauze, and surrounded by a hive of humming, velvety sleep bees. — Merrill Markoe

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

Here, in this painting, in these (hopefully) creative meditations, you will see teh same sky and the same sun, the same story of struggle, of fall and grace, of descent and ascent, of death and resurrection. The same God. The same gifts. If He's not tired of it, why should I be? If His brush is still in His hand, if His words still roll, what can I do but stick my tongue out the cornder of my mouth and diligently (but pitifully) rip Him off? What can I do but meditate on His meditations? (xii) — N.D. Wilson

Creative people in particular traditionally have strained relations with systems, structures, standards, and other perceived constraints on their creative freedom. Nowhere is this clearer than in big organizations where people often complain that "the systems" kill creativity, longingly thinking back to the halcyon days when the company was young and less bureaucratic. Going back to the unstructured start-up days is not an option, however. Established companies require a different kind of innovation: they need a culture in which creativity is part of the corporate ecosystem. The key to building a creative culture is not to declare war on systems, processes, and policies, but to embrace and redesign them so they support and actively enhance innovative behavior. Managers, in other words, have to fight systems with systems, creating an architecture of innovation in their teams and departments. The primary aim is to help people behave more like innovators. — Paddy Miller

For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness? — Kathleen Moore

The most vital, creative, and positive thoughts are those stated in the Bible. Its words are alive and form powerful thought processes. — Norman Vincent Peale

The creative adult is the child who survived after the world tried killing them, making them grown up. The creative adult is the child who survived the blandness of schooling, the unhelpful words of bad teachers, and the nay-saying ways of the world. The creative adult is in essence simply that, a child. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Giving these students, teenagers, any form of power over the use of their own words, allowing them to turn everyday raw material into some form of beauty, is a gift beyond measure. — Gloria Ng

Is a Christian- one who communicates daily with the Creator- to divorce himself from the things God created and intended man to have, and which demonstrate the fact that man has been made in the image of God? In other words, are we who have been made in the image of our creator to be less creative than those who do not know the Creator? The Christian should have more vividly expressed creativity in his daily life. — Edith Schaeffer

In other words, if Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy showed more than their fair share of pathology it was due less to the requirements of their creative work than to the personal sufferings caused by the unhealthy conditions of a Russian society nearing collapse. If so many American poets and playwrights committed suicide or ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol it was not their creativity that did it but an artistic scene that promised much, gave few rewards and left nine out of ten artists neglected if not ignored. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression ... by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking ... There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry. — Herbert Read

In order to be creative rules cannot exist. The creative mind deserves no less. — Steven Cuoco

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos. — Dan Simmons

The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces. — Scott Berkun

It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years. — Michael Morpurgo

There is no privilege in restriction. In other words, I disagree with people who say restriction makes you more creative. I think that's a misleading slogan. I might have been more creative without them than with them. — Asghar Farhadi

Musicians have notes. Painters have paint. Writers have words. — Lisa Fantino

Don't slag off other creators or companies. We'll cheerfully mock dumb politicians on Twitter, but we try to never slam another creator's work or make fun of another company's projects or initiatives. First, because life's too short. We'd rather use that time to celebrate the fantastic work of colleagues and friends. Second, because it's a small world, and people have long memories. A few snarky words today can ruin a chance for an incredibly rewarding creative partnership tomorrow. — Greg Pak

Passion is a deep love for sacred activity. — Lailah Gifty Akita

This is very creative, said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor. — Charles Bukowski

Everyone lives in two worlds," Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. "There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. — Joe Hill

My creative process isn't a long one, so I could have started a song 10 years ago and then finish it 10 years later. It's all just about pushing around words and melodies, for me. The material is kind of shape-shifting. — Antony Hegarty

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. — Ted Hughes

The struggle for a life extracts all our attention, and leaves us blind, deaf, dumb and senseless. The writer, the artist, the musician vanishes, without even the charity of a proper cremation. At this point words become formless sounds, and thoughts run out of paper and jump out of the terra firma and fly in the air, forcing us to find someone to share them with, someone who could understand. The fear of wasting words is the worst kind of it, only a writer knows. — Anu Lal

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture. — Salvatore Quasimodo

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. — Graham Greene