"There are pauses amidst study, and even pauses of seeming idleness, in which a process goes on which may be likened to the digestion of food. In those seasons of repose, the powers are gathering their strength for new efforts; as land which lies fallow recovers itself for tillage."
– James Waddell Alexander (1804-1859), American Presbyterian minister and professor
"I was rehearsing a play, and there was a scene that went on before me, then I had to come in the door. They rehearsed the scene, and one of the actors had thrown a chair at the other one. It landed right in front of the door where I came in. I opened the door and then rather lamely, I said to the producer who was sitting out in the stalls, 'Well, look, I can't get in. There's a chair in my way.' He said, 'Well, use the difficulty.' So I said 'What do you mean, use the difficulty?' He said 'Well, if it's a drama, pick it up and smash it. If it's a comedy, fall over it.' This was a line for me for life: Always use the difficulty."
–– Michael Caine (b. 1933), British actor
Via an interview with NPR's Terry Gross, from her book All I Did Was Ask
"when it gets right down to it the individuals that are really doing interesting things and changing the world don't seem to [be] paying much attention to the cutting edge technologies. they're too busy conducting experiments, spending time alone, making mistakes, dreaming up new ideas, sitting in the midst of uncertainty...embracing mystery."
–– Keri Smith (b. 1975), Canadian author, illustrator and Conceptual artist
"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."
–– Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), American writer and screenwriter
"If you look very intensely and slowly, things will happen that you never dreamed of before."
–– Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), American photographer
"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth."
–– Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273), Persian poet and Sufi mystic; interpretation by Coleman Barks (b. 1937), American poet
"Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity."
–– Mary Catherine Bateson (1939-2021), American cultural anthropologist and writer
via Commonplace Book 2006, p. 110
"Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside of your own experience."
–– Masaru Ibuka (1908-1997), Japanese electronics industrialist and co-founder of Sony
"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."
–– Donatella Versace (b. 1955), Italian fashion designer and businesswoman
"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions."
–– Sir Antony Rupert Jay (1930-2016), English writer, broadcaster, and director
via Commonplace Book 2006, p. 79.
"Almost all creativity requires purposeful play."
–– Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), American psychologist
"Creativity requires the courage to let go of uncertainties."
–– Erich Fromm (1900-1980), German social psychologist, sociologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher and author
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
–– Charles Mingus Jr. (1922-1979), American musician
"Sometimes you've got to let everything go – purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything ... whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out."
–– Tina Turner (b. 1939) American-born Swiss singer and actress
"Everything that's created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness."
–– Wayne Dyer (1940-2015), American author and motivational speaker
"When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur. I sell myself nothing."
–– Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist
Source: Christian Zervos. "Conversations avec Picasso." Cahiers d'Art 10 (1935), pp 173-78.
"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
–– Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), American writer, critic and satirist
"The most important possible thing you can do is a lot of work."
– Ira Glass (b. 1959), American public radio personality
"I have my best ideas when I don't think about having ideas. It's very strange. It's like an electronic flash – sudden! Also, they come during the daytime and in the bathtub! It's very strange. But you cannot count on it, you cannot say, 'Oh, I will have my electronic flash now!' You have to work at the same time, because when people say they wait for inspiration, well, I don't believe in that. Inspiration is a nice word. But the French say the appetite comes when you eat. And the ideas come when you work."
–– Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019), German fashion designer
Source: Beker, Jeanne. 'Stylesetters: 'It started with me and it stops with me.' The Globe and Mail, Saturday April 11, 2015, p. 4. (question & answer interview with Karl Lagerfeld) via my book of commonplace.
"A sketchbook is like a valve, a pressure release system. Instead of weighing things up in my head, I give them a place in my sketchbook. ... [My] sketchbook is a reflection of my inner world, without complaints, worries or private problems."
–– Daniel Kluge (b. 1970), German graphic designer
Source: Richard Brereton. Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators, and Creatives, 2009, p. 178.
"It's easy to forget that the innovations we use are comprised of a series of smaller innovations. However, making new things requires taking apart other things and learning from the pieces. Sometimes inventors even work the other way, developing breakthroughs by deliberately experimenting with existing innovations."
–– Scott Berkun, American writer
Source: Scott Berkun. The Myths of Innovation, p. 78
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
–– Scott Adams (b. 1957), American writer & cartoonist
Source: The Dilbert Principle
"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."
–– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (1797-1851), British writer
"look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you..."
–– Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), French writer
"It's not the note you play that's the wrong note –– it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
–– Miles Davis (1926-1991), American musician, bandleader, and composer
"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly is lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."
– Annie Dillard (b. 1945), American writer
Source: Annie Dillard. The Writing Life. New York: Harper Perennial, 1989; p. 78-79.
