The Creative Quotes & Sayings

Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I'm a harsh critic because I know what I'm capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few-things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I've never executed before or since-I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I've been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it's pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process. — Dave Stevens

Today [the voice of women] is being heard loud and clear. But I do not read the welcome triumph of feminism, social, economic, and creative, as a brief for postmodernism. The advance, while opening new avenues of expression and liberating deep pools of talent, has not exploded human nature into little pieces. Instead, it has set the stage for a fuller exploration of the universal traits that unite humanity. — E. O. Wilson

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them. — Lena Dunham

To me, my parents are my mom and dad, and we were able as kids to do a lot of cool things. Just being part of that family definitely brought out and cultivated the creative arts in us. — Brooklyn Sudano

The line between creative and crazy is mighty thin. — T.C. Slonaker

Sometimes magazines will take artist's creative choices too literally; they assume that I actually live the way I do in music videos. For example: the whole "Dirty" thing. Do you think I wear chaps to the grocery store? — Christina Aguilera

I'm a great believer in the hereafter, in karma, in reincarnation. It does make sense. I believe that God is not just a law-giver, but a creative artist. The greatest of all. And what characterises artists is that they want to redo their work. Maybe it didn't come off perfectly, so they want to see it done again, and improved. Reincarnation is a way for God to improve his earlier works. — Norman Mailer

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about. — Natalie Massenet

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions. — Chester Bennington

The history of discovery is full of creative serendipity. — Tom Kelley

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

You don't get creative by staying in the same place. — Andy Law

If you read reviews of concerts, the word 'creative' comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren't creative. Critics might say they are, but they're just playing another persons work. They didn't create it. — Ned Rorem

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

I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was ... appalling ... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did. — Laura Wade

Economic growth is not just a process of more and better machines, and more and better educated people, but also a transformative and destabilizing process associated with widespread creative destruction. Growth thus moves forward only if not blocked by the economic losers who anticipate that their economic privileges will be lost and by the political losers who fear that their political power will be eroded. Conflict — Anonymous

It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought. — Theodore Roszak

It is enough to have been created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation. Looking into the future, I saw without sorrow, rather with quiet interest, my own decline and fall. — Olaf Stapledon

I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla. — Twyla Tharp

Intellectual growth is when you surpass the barrier of puerility, puzzling people with your dazzling creativity. — Michael Bassey Johnson

When we place our immediate conflicts in the territory of an archetypal story we can better see the nature of our problems and find solutions that bring creative imagination to bear in the realm of hard facts and hardening dilemmas. — Michael Meade

What an amazing creative way to magnify, and illuminate the courage of 30 Sheroes whose courage, leadership and character is symbolic of the many unsung Women Sheroes of past and present. — Emory Douglas

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before. — Benedict Cumberbatch

The way forward is to stop pestering yourself for answers and let it, the creative part of your mind, come up with the solution when the time is right. — Steve Backley

It's cool that you hear something, but what did you feel and what was your tactile and kinesthetic response to it? Those songs and creative sessions mean the most. — Pharrell Williams

Everything from quarks to quasars, butterflies to brain cells, was created so that you and I might delight in the display of divine glory. We alone can glorify God by rejoicing in the beauty His creative handiwork and relishing the splendor of His-revelation in the Person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. — Kelly Monroe Kullberg

Simple formula for the actor: prove you're creative enough to get the job, sane enough to keep the job, and hungry enough to give up everything else to keep them happy. — Brooke Langton

Mother Earth is giving birth to a co-creative humanity. There's not a majority anywhere, but it's cropping up everywhere, because old leadership does not have the authority to guide us. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

The second part of it, which I think is really critical, is understanding that being creative means that you have to sell your ideas. — Jocelyn K. Glei

Had you been a spectator during only the first three days of creation, you might not have judged it as good. What good are seed-bearing plants with no sun for photosynthesis? In His wisdom God knew the work was good because He knew what was coming next. He knows what's coming next for you. That's why He can judge His work in you as good. Give God room to be completely creative. Meet with Him daily as He unfolds the plan in perfect order. He's really good at what He does. — Beth Moore

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. — Piaget

The real challenge in doing a TV show is in what I would call the maintenance energy. You take that creative energy and you use it every week, of course. But you then need to maintain the quality of the stories, and it's harder to do. — Chris Carter

The key to growth is quite simple: creative men with money. The cause of stagnation is similarly clear: depriving creative individuals of financial power. — George Gilder

The universe is so unique and perfect that it could not have originated by chance but was divined by flawless, creative design.
Fritz Zwicky to youngest daughter, Barbarina Zwicky — Fritz Zwicky

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. — Carl Jung

How to earn a viable standard of living while giving vent to their desire to perform creative activities is the quintessential challenge for modern humans. Some people settle for jobs filled with drudgery and in their free time immerse themselves in hobbies that provide them with personal happiness. Other people prefer to find work that makes them happy, even if this occupation requires them to live a more modest standard of living. The greater their impulse is for curiosity and creativity, the less likely that a person will exchange personal happiness for economic security. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I like to work; I like to be creative. I work in the entertainment industry where work may come up, and it may not, so I wanted to do something proactive. I've got a brain; I don't want to just sit at home - I want to do as much as I can. — Louise Nurding

Audiences, as they get smaller, can intensify their relationship with the product, and so can the creative relationship with the people that you are serving. The good news is that, the more shows there are, the less the conglomerates have to gain by breaking the will of each individual creative. — Dan Harmon

The universe is a multi-dimension al creative process, constantly forming new facets of possibility for you and all living things. Expanding our awareness of the process, we allow ourselves to experience more of it. Every moment we can remember that ANYTHING is possible in a realm of endless possibility. — Marianne Williamson

I find it helpful when I stop for the day to leave the last sentence unfinished or the last paragraph only lightly sketched out, so that when I start again I can pick up where I left off the day before. — Julia Bell

If I don't stay creative and if I don't stay in the studio and keep writing and recording, I get kind of depressed. I can't quite remember what I'm supposed to be doing with myself. — Kenny Loggins

Also, after Examined Life was finished I found myself thinking about the way creative opportunities and distribution channels were shifting. Should I be showing my films in theaters or just think about getting them out online? There were other issues, too. — Astra Taylor

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

(Ah, lovely adolescence - when the "talented" are officially shunted off from the herd, thus putting the total burden of society's creative dreams on the thin shoulders of a few select souls, while condemning everyone else to live a more commonplace, inspiration-free existence! What a system . . . ) — Elizabeth Gilbert

I didn't have a regular school experience and wanted a more abstract way of learning. I started exploring in lots of different creative ways. It gave me the opportunity to travel and play music, so it was good for me. — Brie Larson

If you took the world away and just left the elctricity, it would look like the most exquisite filigree ever made - a ball of twinkling silver lines with the occasional coruscating spike of a satellite beam. Even the dark areas would glow with radar and commercial radio waves. It could be the nervous system of a great beast. — Terry Pratchett

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

If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs. — Julian Assange

I think that creative work, music in particular, is a conveyor of inner emotional life. I don't feel one way all the time, so I don't want my music to feel the same way all the time. — Kyp Malone

During dreaming, we're tuned inward, we experience vivid visual imagery, our conventional logic system is turned down, and social norms are loosened, all of which can lead to making more creative associations than we make when we're awake and our brain is censoring the illogical," she says. — Andrea Rock

I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end. — Kurt Vonnegut

There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion. — Caitlin Thomas

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental. — Stephen Spender

In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick on the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers. — Katherine Boo

As a novelist you have just unlimited budget, total creative control. You really get to have your cake - all the cake - and then you can have a second cake if you wanted to. — Naomi Novik

One of the reasons for learning about type is to recognize that we are constantly motivated, simply by the way we've established our neural networks, to shape reality along particular functional lines. Another is to recognize the possibilities for growth and change that exist within - and apart from - the framework we have created for ourselves. Even small changes in our usual way of doing things can make big differences in the way our brain is operating. We develop the ability to think in new ways, and this stimulates creative change in all areas of our lives. — Lenore Thomson

I'm more of a creative learner, ... I do very well in projects, but I was not good at memorizing all of that material in the introductory courses. — Robert Sternberg

I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness. — William P. Young

Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person. — Steve Jobs

As the Internet of things advances, the very notion of a clear dividing line between reality and virtual reality becomes blurred, sometimes in creative ways. — Geoff Mulgan

Even though I didn't write 'Shaun Of The Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz,' I never felt left out of the creative process. — Nick Frost

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. — James Allen

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been. — Alan Alda

My wife Ciera and I can stand face-to-face in our kitchen and stare into each other's eyes and talk for three hours without noticing that any time has passed. She is the kind of gal I spent a lifetime daydreaming about. She is an actor and a creative companion. — Jim Parrack

We can either own our circumstances and be creative in them, or we can throw up our hands and say, I cannot be held accountable because the conditions are not ideal. — Patti Digh

The technical process which is interesting in it's own right but I think the creative process is what's more intriguing to me. — Casey Neistat

As far as life is concerned, there is no such thing as "Nature". There are only homes. Home is that environment to which the individual has become adapted; and almost everything is unnatural outside his range of adaptation. Harmonious equilibrium with nature is an abstract concept with a Platonic beauty but lacking the flesh and blood of life. It fails, in particular, to convey the creative emergent quality of human existence. — Rene Dubos

Conviction in our ideas is dangerous not only because it leaves us vulnerable to false positives, but also because it stops us from generating the requisite variety to reach our creative potential. — Adam M. Grant

Real intelligence is a creative use of knowledge, not merely an accumulation of facts. The slow thinker who can finally come up with an idea of his own is more important to the world than a walking encyclopedia who hasn't learned how to use this information productively. — Susan Winebrenner

Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never dies. Ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever. — Neale Donald Walsch

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

Sam was creative and dedicated, but his wasn't the plodding bright-and-early work ethic of the morning person, like mine. It was the crazy creative burst of the night owl, long dark hours of despair before dawn. — Jennifer Echols

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
"Visit to The World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 1964 — Isaac Asimov

I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous. — Thom Mayne

No astrophysicist would deny the possibility of life. I think we're not creative enough to imagine what life would be like on another planet. Show me a dead alien. Better yet, show me a live one! — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio. — Kiri Te Kanawa

One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels. — Robert Dessaix

Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art. — John F. Kennedy

...people who struggle against tyranny are more psychologically healthy than those who are docile and simply conform to current ways of thinking...there is much evidence that some of the most creative people in history were driven individuals who were terribly unhappy and out of sync with their social context. Creativity itself is a form of deviant behavior that requires individuals to break from usual assumptions and understandings in developing entirely new perspectives and approaches. — David Mechanic

Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever. — Michael Eric Dyson

Creativity is in everyone; it just manifests itself differently with each person. My CPA, for example, is one of the most creative people I know. — Ron Miriello

Exercise your creative muscles all the time, either through classes or through other artistic avenues like painting or dancing or even gardening, staying active and being creative so that when opportunities do come up, you are in a position to take advantage of them. — Tom Irwin

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos. — Andy Hargreaves

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

Einstein's secretary once said that if Einstein were born among the polar bears, he would still be Einstein. But unless polar bears were well versed in theoretical physics, that is not true. Einstein would not be Einstein. Which is not to take anything away from Einstein, or the polar bears, but simply to point out that he was part of a creative ecology, and trying to isolate him from it is not only silly but futile. — Eric Weiner

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it
perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole. — Will Durant

We are all creative, from the mother adding an extra pinch of garlic to her meal, to the entrepreneur launching a brand new product, to the business consultant who creates a more effective way for corporate departments to communicate. The call requires creativity. — Shannon Tanner

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. — D.W. Winnicott

I've always been a big believer in the power of place. I believe that where we are affects who we are when it comes to happiness, spirituality, economics and creative genius. — Eric Weiner

You are the only thinker in
your world and your thought
is creative. Whatever you think
about the other person, you are
also creating in your life. — Joseph Murphy

The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust. — George Bellows

I'd say that that is a challenge, but it also is, again, it's helpful. It's helpful to have the discipline of, okay, I'm doing, I'm doing something that's quite precise over here, working the puppet, and I'm doing something that's very imprecise and creative and unleashed over here, which is the comedy side. And it's kind of nice to allow your brain to be doing those two things at once. — Brian Henson

You made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. In this creative restlessness beats and pulsates what is most deeply human - the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience. — Pope John Paul II

Worry never helped anything, so why turn to it during times of need? It won't nurture or heal you - quite the opposite, actually. It's so much better to put the effort into something creative as a way to quietly meditate through positive action. Create, create, create! — Doreen Virtue

Being an author is to have a toe in the creative pool and a foot in the vat of commerce. — Fennel Hudson

BROWSED this far into the magazine, you've likely noticed something unusual about this issue: it has three consecutive covers. Why? Good question. The theme of The Atlantic 's annual Ideas Issue this year is creativity - which is a hard concept to define, let alone to illustrate. We could have gone with an illuminated lightbulb, or photographed Brad Pitt painting at an easel, but those options didn't seem very ... creative. — Anonymous

Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That's a larger package - a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid. — William Zinsser

There's something fun about the road because there's no 9 to 5. But I do find myself making the effort to take some time off. As much as I don't want to, I have to. I need to reset. I love weeks off, because I can go in the studio and just be creative again. — Hunter Hayes

A lot of white-collar work requires less of the routine, rule-based, what we might call algorithmic set of capabilities, and more of the harder-to-outsource, harder-to-automate, non-routine, creative, juristic - as the scholars call it - abilities. — Daniel H. Pink

I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved and who loved me, I had friend that I trusted and I had money to do what I wanted.
But in spite of all this, I still had a feeling that there was something missing in my life. I was not satisfied. The thirst and longing in my heart was still searching for something more. It made me realize that the deepest pain in my heart was that I was still separated from the Whole and that no outer things or relationships could ease this pain. — Swami Dhyan Giten