Quotes & Sayings About Creativity And Inspiration

Inspiration awakens our creativity, enables us to do the impossible, and improves our mental efficiency. It fires up the soul. — Farshad Asl

An idea is like a spark to creativity, which turns to a wild conflagration of thoughts, burning every ignorance. When the fire burns, the creative power is awake, and comes out to join the ideas in your head to bring out the hidden valuables the world never knew — Michael Bassey Johnson

Sometimes you just have to turn off the lights, sit in the dark, and see what happens inside of you. — Adam Oakley

It is the daily task of the creative to be curious and collect dots. The most creative people I know fill their brains, their idea factories, with as much raw material as they can. They have voracious appetites. — David DuChemin

Don't be confined by the self you have experienced, the self you know. Going beyond what you know and what you have experienced, challenge your brain with new questions and give it new tasks - then it will begin to manifest infinite creativity. — Ilchi Lee

Your creativity is way older than you are, way older than any of us. Your very body and your very being are perfectly designed to live in collaboration with inspiration, and inspiration is still trying to find you - the same way it hunted down your ancestors. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Writers and artists know that ethereal moment, when just one, fleeting something
a chill, an echo, the click of a lamp, a question - -ignites the flame of an entire work that blazes suddenly into consciousness. — Nadine C. Keels

In tough and desperate times when your creativity begs to be birthed, loose the confines of the ground; stand up in your faith and walk atop the waves ... — Stanice Anderson

It's easy to want to be an author. You see it in your mind with sun streaming through windows and a Siamese cat purring on an antique rug and a little pellet stove and somehow the bills are paid and there's wit and self-sufficiency and divine inspiration seeping through walls and pores. And then, in your mind, you skip ahead to a book launch party and more Siamese cats.

When you graduate from wanting to working, you say, "I am going to flesh out this idea and write the whole thing down, and rewrite it, and rewrite it again, and rewrite it unendingly, and I'll have no real assurance of when it'll be good enough, but at some point I'll pitch it to someone who will decide if I'm delusional or not." The optimism and the ego-bruising, unsexy work needed to follow through feels unending. — Kate Inglis

It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first. — Vivienne Westwood

Please embrace the joy of your own creativity,for the world needs more positive inspiration,fostered by the unstoppable power of a mind free to wander. — Cheryl Skory Suma

It has been my personal experience that as I allow the painting to speak I become lost, it is delicious and at the same time frightening. The best ones, to me, have a life of their own. — Luther E. Vann

Life is filled with opportunities. Be courageous and fulfill your destiny. You were created for a purpose and once you realize your potential, you become unstoppable. Let no one get in the way of you pursuing your dreams. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

One of the tutors let it slip when we were talking about the difference between revelation, inspiration, creativity and madness. How can we know which is which? — James Runcie

I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration. — Arthur Holitscher

Don't be afraid of what others may think. Your creativity belongs to you, your inspiration, your imagination is all yours. Be passionate and write with fire in your words. Allow no boundaries to what you feel and believe. The spark that drives you to write is the fuel for your desire to create great novels. Know that you have the spirit within. — Sheila Renee Parker

Don't be afraid to do weird stuff, so long as you do it cheaply and cover everyone's bets. Be bold. Be stupid, if you have to: so long as you don't hurt anybody, what's it matter how dopey your dream is? If I hadn't made TUSK? If I'd let it die as a podcast? I wouldn't have three other movies I'm now making within the span of a year. Some folks will try to shame you for trying something outside the norm; the only shame is in not trying to accomplish your dreams. — Kevin Smith

An artist is someone who sees and feels realty very intensely. Creativity doesn't mean just making things up out of thin air. It means seeing and feeling the world so vividly that you can put together connections and patterns that help to explain reality. It means you see the beauty in the world rather than trying to hide from it. — Danny Gregory

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to ... my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go. — Salman Rushdie

Don't go through life with a closed mind. Allow innovations and creativity to flow. We should always challenge ourselves to excel in more ways than one. Be open to ideas or suggestions on how to improve. And, the chances of reaching your goals will increase enormously. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. — Shakti Gawain

When there's no stimulus to be found on the outside, you have no option but to look inside yourself for inspiration, and when I did it set off a creativity that had always been inside of me, It mixed with my environment and life experiences to make something tangible,something that expressed me. — Bernard Sumner

We like to think of creativity as a space for untrammelled imagination, free from all constraints. Yet
while freedom, rule-breaking and inspiration are undoubtedly essential to the creative process, the
popular image of creativity overlooks another aspect: examine the life of any great artist and you
will find evidence of hard work, discipline and a hard-won knowledge of the rules and conventions
of their medium. — Mark McGuinness

We are never more creative than when we are at odds with the world and there is nothing so artistically destructive as comfort. Princess Leia taught me that. — Simon Pegg

Inspiration and creativity, they ride right next to one anotherNot everyday are you going to wake up, the clouds are gonna part and the rays are gonna come downsometimes you gotta just get in there and force yourself to work and maybe something good will come out of it. — Jack White

Misinterpretation leads me to inspiration and creativity because I think my brain is trying to figure out some information that I'm confused about. — Michel Gondry

In 1829 Rossini was at an age which has often proven critical in the lives of musicians, painters and writers. Lapses into silence far more complete than Rossini's, creative failures, suicides, and unanticipated deaths have been common in the middle to late 30s. As Charles Rosen has noted, 'It is the age when the most fluent composer begins to lose the ease of inspiration he once possessed, when even Mozart had to make sketches and to revise'. — Richard Osborne

The basket would never make her famous or end up in a museum. The best part of it was the making of it, sitting at the table weaving while outside the lake crashed into shore and the seagulls roosted somewhere for the night and two women stopped for a moment to watch. — Ellen Airgood

For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves. — Helen Keller

But when I accept the call of creative passion, I am a bold stroke of vermilion, a renegade hyperbole, or the wild fury of jazz violin. The world is a canvas to explore, a blank page to fill, and an arpeggio of waiting experiences. This moving masterpiece called "life" becomes intoxicating when it's lived as if it were art. — Jill Badonsky

My grandfather gave me inspiration to cook, and love food and flavors. My Aunt Raffie, gave me creativity and the inspiration to create new things. My mother inspires me to find simplicity in food. — Giada De Laurentiis

Mistress Creation keeps calling my name ... i long for her, and she, for me ... we will be reunited soon. In the interim, i bide my time dreaming of her, writing about her and stretching her across the vast landscape of my imagination. "Soon", i whisper to her, "Soon — Jaeda DeWalt

Commitment and creativity cannot be captured and handcuffed. Inspiration cannot be jailed. The heart cannot be contained. — Gary Zukav

I could write about how I feel when I sing, write and create something from heartbreak, sorrow, sadness or just simply nothingness. How nothingness can become the most beautiful, unexplainable feeling that makes you forget about gravity for an hour. — Charlotte Eriksson

Rise early and seize each day, learn much and use this knowledge well, spend time with those you love, never abuse your pets, use logic to fight the irrational (for it is everywhere), defend the environment and its wildlife as a knight would protect King Arthur, meld mind and heart for greatest creativity, follow your dreams, and become all that you can be. — Charles Kohlhase

If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great. — Margaret Heffernan

Where does creativity come from?
Creativity comes from the Universe itself.
"There is music and poetry in the Universe itself - surely we hear it on planet earth." And Creativity comes from our joys and sorrows, our deep-hearted experiences. It also comes "from and in the heart of God. All our spiritual traditions the world over agree that creativity follows through the human heart and that it flows from the Divine Heart."
Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have "permission" to be creative and to be a creator too. — Matthew Fox

It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes to close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in -at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may serve to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion on all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason -so it seems to me- relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass. — Friedrich Schiller

Q: What is creativity? A: The relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Give a hundred writers the same idea and you'll get a hundred different stories. — Joy Fielding

Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things - like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain cloud formation looked very like a painkiller dissolving in a glass of water. I didn't work toward that simile, it was simply there: I was mugged, as it were, by the similarity between these two very different things. Literary composition can be a similar process. The writer's real world and the writer's fictional world are compared, and these comparisons turned into text. But other times literary composition can be a plain old slog, and nothing to do with zones or inspiration. It's world making and the peopling of those worlds, complete with time lines and heartache. — David Mitchell

Suffering can precipitate creativity, liberating the creator through inspiration and then many available channels of human communication, and therefore there is value in suffering. — Brent Green

Measurements are never enough. The artist's eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors. — David McCullough

Anything creative requires a bit of acting,and filling in blanks with imagination. — Christina Westover

From the tattered edges of an exhausted mind, inspiration blooms ... mental filters disintegrate and walls crumble, as the ocean of creativity washes over everything. — Jaeda DeWalt

The willingness to be a champion for stupid ideas is the key to greater creativity, innovation, fulfillment, inspiration, motivation and success. — Richie Norton

Design is a fundamental human activity, relevant and useful to everyone. Anything humans create - be it product, communication or system - is a result of the process of making inspiration real. I believe in doing what works as circumstances change: quirky or unusual solutions are often good ones. Nature bends and so should we as appropriate. Nature is always right outside our door as a reference and touch point. We should use it far more than we do. — Maggie Macnab

Artistic temperament is like a king with vigor and unlimited opportunity. You shake the structure to pieces by playing with it. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Engaged, productive employees do not work in a vacuum. They need workplaces that help them bring out the best in themselves - mosh pits of creativity where energy and inspiration can flow freely. — Carson Tate

Creation and Free Will are constantly moving, hand in hand, like children traveling along a path full of impulses and inspirations.Through the use of the Dragonflame philosophy they become superior artistic beings able to enjoy and share the fruits of creative labor. — Lawren Leo

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past.
Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial ... Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths. — Robert Ellsberg

If you want people to perform better, you reward them, right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them ... But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity. — Daniel H. Pink

But we [women] are only at the beginning [of revamping feminism]. And our strictures on each other prove this. Our enforcement of thinness, of non-sexuality, of 'good' feminism versus 'bad' feminism, are proofs of our being at the beginning, not the end of a process. That younger feminists are embracing their sexuality is a sign of hope
a sign that women's lives will some day be less constricted, less fearful of the dark side of creativity (to which Eros provides the key). If that happens, we will at least have the full gamut of inspiration so long denied us. We will have access to all parts of ourselves
all the animals within us, from wolf to lamb. When we learn to love all the animals within us, we will know how to make men love them too. — Erica Jong

I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it. — Shannon L. Alder

You are not here merely to making a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. — Woodrow Wilson

The process of creation can be unpredictable and, in some way, similar to love: the brightest waves of inspiration may sometimes occur in wrong timing, wrong places, or even with wrong people. — Sahara Sanders

Perhaps creativity's greatest mercy is this: By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir - something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration — Elizabeth Gilbert

We all have a god and a poet inside us. The poet, the human; the god, the divine.
It is by the grace of our god that we can find the divine inspiration with which to wax poetic about our human experiences. — Michele Jennae

It's ever so important to believe in what you do, trust your ability to create and show yourself worthy. Never sell yourself short. — Simon Zingerman

Creativity is a muscle, and when we flex the muscle of our imagination, we find inspiration. — Inbar Shahar

If your creation is taking 99% perspiration, it stinks and you need more inspiration. — Kelly Bryson

A lot of people mock fandom and fan fiction, like it's lazy to base your own creativity and passion on someone else's work. But some of us need a stepping-stone to start. What's wrong with finding joy in making something, regardless of the inspiration? — Felicia Day

Writing is a sickness only cured by writing. — Niall Williams

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, 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. — Jim Jarmusch

Marijuana enhances our mind in a way that enables us to take a different perspective from 'high up', to see and evaluate our own lives and the lives of others in a privileged way. Maybe this euphoric and elevating feeling of the ability to step outside
the box and to look at life's patterns from this high perspective is the inspiration behind the slang term "high" itself. — Sebastian Marincolo

The renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation, ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s, made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross-culturally valid psychology had to include observations from such areas as mystical states; cosmic consciousness; psychedelic experiences; trance phenomena; creativity; and religious, artistic, and scientific inspiration. — Stanislav Grof

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.
Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,
spiritual guides and sources of inspiration.
If the musician is illuminated from within,
he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.
Then he is serving planet and its people,
healing what ails us. Such music is truly important.
It is said that "only one who obeys can truly command."
When the artist is immersed in a services,
giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:
He is being seen by all others as a master. — Kenny Werner

Breathing is a lot like creativity. Like an inhale, you receive an inspiration, you let it run through the unique magnificence of who you are, and then you release it into the world, letting it go, unattached to the way it needs to look. — Jill Badonsky

It is the most fun I'm ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there's nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it. It's the greatest peace when I'm in a scene, and it's just me and the character, that's it, that's where I want to live my life. — Joss Whedon

Creativity isn't about avoiding frustration. It's about pushing through and coming out the other side. — Michele Jennae

The Ancient Romans did not regard acts of genius to emanate from within an individual - but rather saw it as a collaboration between a spirit of creativity and a human being. So it could be that sometimes an individual had that power, that divine inspiration, or other times not. The spirit might have moved on to some other lucky soul. — Liz Garbus

It was during the Renaissance that creativity was first seen, not as a matter of divine inspiration, but as a gift of a great learned man to imitate God's ability to create. As Prometheus stole the fire of the Gods and brought it to the mankind, humanity needed to steal the secret of 'creation' from Gods and understand its essence. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

It is the people who innovate that inspire, and innovation is not born of the status quo. — Michele Jennae

The greatest moments of creativity come in absolute solitude, when one's mind is free from distraction and able to probe the depths of the impossible. — Fennel Hudson

The invitation of the keyword "Inspiration" is to ask how we can be uplifted, encouraged, motivated, and moved deeply in ways that allow us to be invigorated or energized to love our life and live with more passion, awareness, confidence, creativity and happiness."
~ David Lawrence Brown
333 Keywords to Change Your Life — David Lawrence Brown

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them
with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ... — Eudora Welty

Embrace the creativity and don't care about the result. It's better to be a beginner till the end of the life than waiting forever to be perfect. — Elizabeth Gilbert

To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just instructors and test administrators. They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students. Teaching is an art form. Great teachers know they have to cultivate curiosity, passion and creativity in their students. — Ken Robinson

With Bruford, the album was One Of A Kind. All-instrumental, it possessed the kind of focused vision that allowed for no ifs or buts. With the unnerving confidence of youth, it had This Is What We Do And This Is How We Do It stamped all over it. — Bill Bruford

I love travel, it promotes open-mindedness, and I believe that the interactions you have as you go places and meet people all sharpen the mind. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Life is beautiful dream. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm attracted to intelligence and creativity and passion - and not necessarily the romantic kind. I want to learn from someone who is greedy for information and light and laughter and the whole world. Someone who celebrates their days and finds inspiration in what other people accomplish. — Renee Zellweger

To the memory of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, and many others who came before me as well as those who will come after. We are one. Thank you. — Luther E. Vann

And my theory about professional artists was as follows: artists are not necessarily the most creative or inspired individuals in any given community. Instead they are those individuals most willing to exploit their own creativity and inspiration, most willing to gain personal profit from their unconscious and its emanations, those with the most missionary zeal for the dissemination of their own idiosyncratic perspectives. Questions of pure creativity clearly lay elsewhere. — Jacob Wren

The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance. — Aberjhani

I don't think you'll ever replace human judgment and human inspiration and creativity because, at the end of the day, you need to be asking questions like, O.K., the system says this. Is this really what we want to do? Is that the right thing? — Laszlo Bock

It is possible for music to be labeled "Christian" and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a "Christian" movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft. — Rob Bell

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

It's called "being an artist" for a reason; it's something YOU ARE. It's how you live. It's WHO you are. How you spend your life and what you leave behind. — Charlotte Eriksson

Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration,motivation, and a pinch of creativity — Bo Bennett

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. — Steven Pressfield

At each stage ... entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. — Poul Anderson

There is no one who has ever created music with the combination of intelligence, intuition, depth, creativity, and humor that Jerry Garcia has. His work and life will continue to be a limitless source of inspiration for all of us. — Bruce Hornsby

Every human being has divinity encased within its spirit and it is the task of its creator as well as itself to set it free. No human being is an end product, every being still breathing is a creation still under creation. — Toni Sorenson

Inspiration is not just a short-term momentum. It could take time and generations of change to truly build a culture of creativity. — Pearl Zhu

Authenticity is our natural state of being. The authentic self is a state of being where we are centered, creative, adaptive, and inspired. — Henna Inam

Well, in this world of basic stereotyping, give a guy a big nose and some weird hair and he is capable of anything. — Frank Zappa

Other things being equal, it is the person who can lift his work up to the plane of the intuitional and inspiration who achieves greatness, both in his work and in his career. — Stanwood Cobb

Celebrate your life now, as it unfolds.
Turn away from judgement and negative theories about your worth, your potential, and your destiny. See what you already have. — Danny Gregory

Art is about going a little nuts and justifying the next sentence. — Young-Ha Kim