"Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization."
–– Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American writer, quote from August 10, 2004
Source: Austin Kleon newsletter, Friday April 11, 2025
via: Sketchbook U 21, 2025, p. 11.
"The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day."
–– David Lynch (1946-2025), American filmmaker, visual artist, musician and actor
via: Sketchbook U 21, 2025, p. 13.
"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
"A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas."
–– Paul Valéry (1871-1945), French poet, philosopher, essayist"Ideas come along in the strangest way when you just pay attention."
–– David Lynch (1946-2025), American filmmaker, visual artist, musician and actor
Source: David Lynch. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006; p. 77.
via Commonplace Book 2013-2014, 2013, p. 39.
"Darkness is generative, and generation, biological and artistic both, requires this amorous engagement with the unknown, this entry into the realm where you do not quite know what you are doing and what will happen next. Creation is always in the dark because you can only do the work of making by not quite knowing what you're doing, by walking into darkness, not staying in the light. Ideas emerge from edges and shadows to arrive in the light, and though that's where they may be seen by others, that's not where they're born."
–– Rebecca Solnit (b. 1961), American author
Source: Rebecca Solnit. The Faraway Nearby. New York: Viking, 2013; p. 185.
via: Commonplace Book 2013-2014, 2014, p 81-2.
"Every person is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time."
–– Voltaire, nom de plume of François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), French writer, historian and philosopher
Source: dailyphilosopher, Instagram, November 21, 2024.
via: Sketchbook N 14, 2024, p. 38.
"If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop."
–– Matt Farley (b. 1978), American musician, song writer, and film maker
Source: Austin Kleon Newsletter, April 5, 2024.
"Become an observer of group dynamics. Ideas don't live in a vacuum. They are brought to life and championed by individuals. Start to analyze how ideas either bloom or are killed by the people around them, around you. How is your inner circle affecting the quality of the ideas that live or die?"
–– David Usher (b. 1966), British-born Canadian musician, author, and public speaker
via: Striped notebook, 2016, p. 6.
"Sometimes you lead the ideas and sometimes the ideas lead you. They always take you to places you didn't expect."
–– David Usher (b. 1966), British-born Canadian musician, author, and public speaker
via: Striped notebook, 2016, p. 5.
"This skillful man ... has to play some written music which is inferior to his own ideas. Nevertheless his superior ideas are the consequences of those inferior ones."
–– unknown theology student, 1741 re: German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
* Bach played "lesser" music to get his brain going and to stimulate ideas he would use for his own improvisation and composition
Source: Range Widely, blog by David Epstein via: Austin Kleon newsletter, June 30, 2023
via: Sketchbook 33, 2023, p. 68.
"We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently."
–– James Hillman (1926-2011), American Jungian psychologist
via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2019 i, 2019, p. 14.
"[Ideas] come from day dreaming, from drifting, that moment when you're just sitting there ... The trouble with these days is that it's really hard to get bored. I have 2.4 million people on Twitter who will entertain me at any moment ... it's really hard to get bored. I'm much better at putting my phone away, going for boring walks, actually trying to find the space to get bored in. That's what I've started saying to people who say 'I want to be a writer.' I say 'great, get bored.'"
–– Neil Gaiman (b. 1960), British author and screenwriter
via: Sketchbook 29, 2016, p. 135.
"It is not simply the brightest who have the best ideas; it is those who are best at harvesting ideas from others. It is not only the most determined who drive change; it is those who most fully engage with like-minded people. And it is not wealth or prestige that best motivates people; it is respect and help from peers."
–– Alex Pentland (b. 1951), American computer scientist, author, serial entrepreneur
Source: Alex Pentland Social Physics. from Austin Kleon blog May 13, 2016.
via: Sketchbook 28, 2016, p. 134.
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
–– Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist
via: Sketchbook 26, 2022, p. 129.
"It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you really consider them well, you may find really marvellous ideas."
–– Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter, engineer, inventor, and architect
via: Sketchbook 21, 2013, p. 16
"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."
–– Donatella Versace (b. 1955), Italian fashion designer and businesswoman
"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.
