Quotes: Brian Eno

"I often think that I don't have a single new idea in my head. But the big mistake is to just wait for inspiration to happen. It won't come looking for you. You have to start doing something: you have to build a trap to catch it. I like to do that by starting the very mundane process of tidying my studio. It may seem like it has nothing to do with the creative job in hand but I think tidying up is a form of daydreaming, and what you're really doing is tidying your mind. It's a kind of mental preparation. It's a way of getting your mind in place to notice something. And that's what being creative is really: it's noticing when something interesting is starting to happen."

–– Brian Eno (b. 1948), British musician and producer 

Quotes: Nate Berkus

"I've always believed you need space to disengage in order to be creative." 

–– Nate Berkus (b. 1971), American interior designer and TV host 

Source: Caitlin Flemming and Julie Grebel. Sense of Place: Design Inspired by Where We Live." New York: Abrams, 2023; p. 85. 

via: Sketchbook M 13, 2024, 2025, p. 13.

Quotes: Gareth Brookes

"I've heard people say that it takes 10,000 hours to master your style or your line or something, but I think it takes 10,000 hours to become boring and mediocre. The moment you master something is the moment you stop being creative." 

–– Gareth Brookes, British artist 

Source: Austin Kleon, Instagram Stories, January 2, 2025 

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2024, 2025, p. 45.

Quotes: Yumi Sakugawa

"Creative expression is not just the actual work you create, but the person you become and the life you live as you become the person who is devoted to the ongoing practice of creating work and sharing it with the world." 

–– Yumi Sakugawa (b. 1985), American interdisciplinary artist 

Source: The Attention Habit, Instagram, December 14, 2024.

Quotes: Christopher Alexander

"In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students –– and adults –– become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching." 

–– Christopher Alexander (1936-2022), Austrian-born British-American architect, author, and design theorist 

Source: Christopher Alexander et. al. A Pattern Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; p. 100.

via: Commonplace Book, 2024, p.11.

Quotes: Lance Letscher

""My work is really slow and repetitive. ... You have to go through almost excruciating boredom to be spontaneous and creative, to get to a place where the work really flows." For eight hours a day he combines experience and improvisation, As he described the process to an interviewer in 2004, "It is mysterious in a mundane way.""

–– Lance Letscher (b. 1962), American collage artist and Charles Dee Mitchell

Source: Lance Letscher Collage. Introduction by Charles Dee Mitchell. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2009, p. 6.

via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2019, p. 36. 

Quotes: Iain McGilchrist

"Negation is creative ... By having less of something more comes into being." 

–– Iain McGilchrist (b. 1953), British psychiatrist, writer, lecturer 

Source: Austin Kleon September 23, 2023, Instagram

Quotes: Austin Kleon

"Creative people need time to sit around and do nothing." 

–– Austin Kleon (b. 1983), American author and illustrator

Source: Austin Kleon. Steal Like an Artist. New York: Workman Publishing, 2012, p. 67.

via: Sketchbook 32, 2022, p. 49.

Women's quotes: Rachel Naomi Remen

"At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity." 

–– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 1938), American physician and teacher 

via: Sketchbook 30, 2018, p. 101. 

Quotes: Joseph Chilton Pearce

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." 

–– Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926-2016), American author, lecturer 

via: Sketchbook 27, 2015, p. 116.

Quotes: Rainer Maria Rilke

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. For the creative, there is no poverty."

–– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist 

via Sketchbook 20, 2012, p. 60

Quotes 315: John Ashbery

"misunderstanding is a creative process, another word for metaphor." 

–– John Ashbery (1927-2017), American poet and art critic; quote from Jane Hammond: Paper Work 

via Sketchbook 8, 2009, p. 13

Quotes 185: Anni Albers

"Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials." 

–– Anni Albers (1899-1994), German-born American textile artist and printmaker

Quotes: Häberli

"To be creative I need books, art, objects, materials, colours and daylight. And silence." 
– Alfredo Häberli, Buenos Aires-born designer (from Elle Decoration U.K., November 2009, p.101)