Creative Impulse Quotes

Through all of history mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet. ~ Ray Manzarek

Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work
the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part. ~ Vance Palmer

There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. ~ Eric Hoffer

When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers. ~ Josh Gad

They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence. ~ A.W. Tozer

I would rather make fun of things, and I'm struggling against an inborn fatalism . . . The creative impulse is such a fragile thing, but we have to create now. We owe it to ourselves to do the work. I want to encourage you. If you aspire to write, put aside all the niceties and sureties about what art should be and write something that makes the scales fall from our eyes. Forget the tired axioms about showing and telling, about sense of place - any possible obstruction - and write to destroy complacency, to rattle people, to help people, first and foremost yourself. Lodge your ideas like glass shards in the minds of everyone who would have you believe there's no hope. And read, as often and as violently as you can. If you have friends, as I do, who tacitly believe that it's too much of a chore to read a book, just one fucking book, from start to finish, smash every LCD they own. This is an opportunity. There's too much at stake now to pretend that everything is okay. ~ Dan Piepenbring

Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity. ~ Saul Bass

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely. ~ Nick Cave

Foreword: Life is tension or the result of tension: without tension the creative impulse cannot exist. If human life be taken as the result of tension between the two polarities night and day, night, the negative pole, must share equal importance with the positive day. At night, under the influence of cosmic radiations quite different from those of the day, human affairs are apt to come to a crisis. At night most human beings die and are born.
Sleep Has His House describes in the night-time language certain stages in the development of one individual human being. No interpretation is needed of this language we have all spoken in childhood and in our dreams; but for the sake of unity a few words before every section indicate the corresponding events of the day. ~ Anna Kavan

Marketing is not what lures a writer to this pursuit. Marketing is the adversary that arrives smuggled inside the Trojan Horse of one's creative impulse. ~ Jane Friedman

While engaged in automatic writing I strain to create a protective personal haven, ferret out a padded cell where I can rapturously hold court with the voltaic cells of the self. I labor in solitary, transfixed in a suspended state of consciousness. Freewheeling writing creates a bridgeworks to the situs where hidden gems of insight and candid genuineness wait to be unsheathed by the penetrating beam of a reflective mind trolling for inspirational insight. Probing putative desires while contemporaneously fencing with a barrage of suppressed insecurities, requires piercing protective layers of denial and traveling with teratological demons to confront the monstrous self-destructive gene lodged in the deepest recesses of a confused psyche. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

As a form of body language, when the mind is receptive to the sensory experience, writing speaks the truth about all thoughts and feelings. Now I don't want to be misunderstood here because this isn't a special talent or skill. It's present in all of us. The trick is to discover it, cultivate it and translate it from an internal state to an expressive sensuality. It is truly a creative impulse that unconsciously expresses emotions and can also arouse emotion in the person reading the book. The beauty and harmony of the writer never gets old and there are as many new things to learn each day, as there are varieties of adjectives, nouns and verbs in the world. It is the ultimate way to communicate with your reader. ~ Karl Wiggins

Why does it seem as if the poorly adjusted people – the misfits and social outsiders – create art and the most sane and rational of the human species make money? Does creating art require a person to tap into the irrational magma of their soul? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

What we shall desire for individuals is now clear: strong creative impulses, overpowering and absorbing the instinct of possession; reverence for others; respect for the fundamental creative impulse in ourselves. A certain kind of self-respect or native pride is necessary to a good life; a man must not have a sense of utter inward defeat if he is to remain whole, but must feel the courage and the hope and the will to live by the best that is in him, whatever outward or inward obstacles it may encounter. So far as it lies in a man's own power, his life will realize its best possibilities if it has three things: creative rather than possessive impulses, reverence for others, and respect for the fundamental impulse in himself. ~ Bertrand Russell

Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free. ~ Patti Smith

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught ... What a teacher can do ... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The struggle of the artist against the art-ideology, against the creative impulse and even against his own work also shows itself in his attitude towards success and fame; these two phenomena are but an extension, socially, of the process which began subjectively with the vocation and creation of the personal ego to be an artist. In this entire creative process, which begins with self-nomination as artist and ends in the fame of posterity, two fundamental tendencies - one might almost say, two personalities of the individual - are in continual conflict throughout: one wants to eternalize itself in artistic creation, the other in ordinary life - in brief, immortal man vs. the immortal soul of man. ~ Otto Rank

The real magic is in making the intangible idea, the creative impulse, manifest and live in our reality. ~ Mark Ryan

Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y. ~ Jonah Lehrer

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars. ~ Steve Albini

Research has shown that constant relocation in childhood is often associated with creativity. It seems that the creative impulse is sparked by the need to reconcile contrasting views of the world. If you move home, you start living a slightly different life, so you compare it with your previous life, note the divergences and the similarities, see what you like better and what you miss, and as you do so, your mind becomes more flexible and capable of combining thoughts and ideas in new and fresh ways. ~ John Cleese

It is well to be alone. It fertilizes the creative impulse. ~ Max Nordau

There was always a creative impulse in me but I never felt rooted to anything. ~ Fred Ward

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

Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals. ~ Ida Tarbell

I think every creative impulse that a working writer, or artist of any sort has, comes out of that dark old country where dreams come from. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons

And a keen jealousy invades me, not of other people, but of that me made of ink and periods and commas, who wrote the novels I will write no more, the author who continues to enter the privacy of this young woman, while I, I here and now, with the physical energy I feel surging, much more reliable than the creative impulse, I am separated from her by the immense distance of a keyboard and a white page on the roller. ~ Italo Calvino

I believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse. ~ Robert Fripp

Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the awful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style. ~ Christina Stead

True alchemy lies in this formula: 'Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

So please, in the name of John, Paul, George, and possibly Ringo, do not be afraid to screw up once in a while. Life can beat every creative impulse out of you and make you scared to embark in new directions. I say, embark away. (Doug French) ~ Heather B. Armstrong

When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift. ~ Justina Chen

With spiritual growth comes new creative potential, leading to the realization that you are pure potential, able to fill any creative impulse. ~ Deepak Chopra

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. ~ Hans Hofmann

In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. ~ Patti Smith

The artist creates something out of nothing! Without the thoughts and feelings of the artist, there would be no art. It's their particular creative mind in contemplation that links to intention to give birth to what we call an artistic creation. This is how the power of intention worked in creating you, someone new, entirely unique, someone out of nothing. Reproducing this in yourself means encountering the creative impulse and knowing that the power of intention is reaching for the realization of all that it feels, and that it is expressing itself as you. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man. ~ Henry George

Science is the greatest creative impulse of our time. It dominates the intellectual scene and forms our lives, not only in the material things which it has given us, but also in that it guides our spirit. ~ Polykarp Kusch

The Arts are not drugs. They are not guaranteed to act when taken. Something as mysterious and capricious as the creative impulse has to be released before they can act. ~ E. M. Forster

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential. ~ V.S. Pritchett

Writers resist the terrifying silence that engulfs us. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I have long considered the creative impulse to be a visit-a thing of grace, perhaps. Not commanded, owned, so much as awaited, prepared for. A thing, also, of mystery. ~ Loreena McKennitt

I write poetry because I can't disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time I've been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can't be buried away. How to seal myself up now? ... It no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel. ~ Gabriela Mistral

Our knowing - even of the most unexceptional kind - is always too big, too rich, too an cient, and too connected for us to be the source of it individually. At the same time, our knowing - even of the most elevated kind - is too en gaged, too precise, too tailored, too active, and too experiential for it to be just of a generic size. The experience of knowing is no less unique, no less creative, and no less extraordinary for being one of participa tion. As a matter of fact, on the face of it, it would probably not amount to much otherwise. ~ Etienne Wenger

The writer's ultimate purpose is to use his gifts to develop man's awareness of himself so that he, man, can become a better instrument for living together with other men. This sense of identity is the root by which all honest creative effort is fed. ~ Jay Saunders Redding

No one, especially not Birkhoff himself, would claim that the intricacies of aesthetic pleasure could be reduced entirely to a mere formula. However, in Birkhoff's words, "In the inevitable analytic accompaniment of the creative process, the theory of aesthetic measure is capable of performing a double service: it gives a simple, unified account of the aesthetic experience, and it provides means for the systematic analysis of typical aesthetic fields. ~ Mario Livio

For me to say I wasn't a genius I'd just be lying to you and to myself ~ Kanye West

It's like in eco-economics where what you take from the system has to be balanced by what you give in to it, balanced or exceeded to create that anti-entropic surge which characterizes all creative life and especially this step across to a new world, this place that is neither nature nor culture, transformation of a planet into a world and then a home. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Organized religion is sane and not silly when read as myth and poetry rather than science and law. Religion speaks nonsense when taken literally, but reveals some of the deepest truths of humankind when understood mythically, poetically, and even allegorically-that is when it is read with an active and creative imagination. ~ Rami M. Shapiro

Your circumstances will line up with your words ... Words are like seeds, they have creative power ... The more you talk about it the more you call it in ... Your words will give life to what you are saying ... You can change your world by simply changing your words ... You can use your words to bless your life or curse your life. ~ Joel Osteen

As I learned about the consequences of my food choices and as I recognized that I didn't have to eat animals, and that eating animals caused the animals to suffer, it caused an enormous footprint on our planet, and it wasn't healthy, it made since to go vegan. And, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I think most people who've decided to go vegan share a similar experience. It's very empowering. And, when I went vegan I actually started eating a wide variety of foods I had never tried before. Different ethnic foods. You also start combining things in different ways, you start becoming more creative in the kitchen. But I went vegan just because it seemed to make sense, and it was aligned with my own values, because I didn't want to support this system that was so abusive to animals, and wasting and squandering so many scarce resources on our planet. And it was also healthier, so it was in my interest to eat food that was plant-based instead of animal-based. Living a vegan lifestyle makes a lot of sense. ~ Gene Baur

Think of your focus as a charger. It sends more power to where you channel the energy. You can charge up aggression, problems, and conflicts or wellness, compassion, and harmony. You can charge peace or war, love or hate, success or failure. You are the connecting factor between creative energy and reality. ~ Emily Maroutian

One of the tragic ironies of history is that such original and creative geniuses as Buddha and Jesus have been extolled as perfect patterns for all to emulate. In the very struggle to be like someone else rather than to be one's own true self, or to do one's own best in one's own environment, a child is in danger of losing the pearl that is really beyond price - the integrity of his (or her) own soul. ~ Sophia Lyon Fahs

As a kid I never had the impulse to climb anything. I think that most kids who live in small towns or rural areas outside of the city, that's what they do - climb walls, or trees, or whatever. To me, it was more dance classes and not being very boyish. ~ Jamie Bell

All creative work has its greatest reality while it is still in a man's mind, before he begins to execute it. ~ John Prebble

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of coarse you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds. ~ Stephen King

But I'm different now than I was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I'd been in the beginning. And I'll be different tomorrow than i am today. And what that means is that i can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it would'nt be the same. My experience would'nt be the same. To me, that's what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you. So how could I recommend a trip to someone else, if I don't even know what to expect? My advice would be to make a list of places on some index cards, shuffle them, and pick any fice at random. Then just ... go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it does'nt matter where you end up or how much money you brought. It'll be something you'll remember forever. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Love turned out to be soul-crippling, stomach-turning, weirdly claustrophobic: a sense of endlessness bottled up inside him, endless weight, endless potential, with only the small outlet of a shivering pale girl in a bad rain jacket to escape through. Touching her was the farthest thing from his mind. The impulse was to throw himself at her feet. ~ Jonathan Franzen

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war. ~ Stanley Crouch

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation
experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way ~ Paul Theroux

I love creative people. ~ Zac Posen

With her face tilted up to his, the subtle edge of moonlight touched along the edge of one high cheekbone, the tilted edge of one eye, and those beautiful, enticing lips. Obeying an impulse he couldn't put into words, he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his. ~ Thea Harrison

At this time of the year it seems that everything ought to be creative, not destructive, and that we should encourage things to live and not die. ~ Vera Brittain

But I think I know just as many creative people who've never taken drugs in their life as I do who have taken a lot of drugs. ~ John Frusciante

My point is this - if you want to be happy in showbiz (or any creative field), listen to that voice inside you. Even if it says "Fuck it" sometimes. Work with your friends. Avoid chasing fame or money. Just do what you want to do, when and how you want to do it. And if it's not making you happy, quit. Quit hard, and quit often. Eventually you'll end up somewhere that you never want to leave."
- Bobcat Goldthwait ~ Bobcat Goldthwait

The daemonic-divine object may appear to the mind an object of horror and dread, but at the same time it is no less something that allures with a potent charm, and the creature, who trembles before it, utterly cowed and cast down, has always at the same time the impulse to turn to it, nay even to make it somehow his own. ~ Rudolf Otto

She encouraged any artistic impulse I had, and my father discouraged any artistic impulse I had. They took out their problems with each other on me and my sister. ~ Bill Griffith

The human papillomavirus (HPV) has long been known as a sexually transmitted infection that, at its worst, can cause cervical cancer in women. A vaccine is now available - these days, vaccines are increasingly swiftly developed - not to cure this malady but to immunize women against it. But there are forces in the administration who oppose the adoption of this measure on the grounds that it fails to discourage premarital sex. To accept the spread of cervical cancer in the name of god is no different, morally or intellectually, from sacrificing these women on a stone altar and thanking the deity for giving us the sexual impulse and then condemning it. We ~ Christopher Hitchens

For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war. ~ Stephen R. Donaldson

I wouldn't mind doing Playboy again. But only if I had creative control. ~ Holly Madison

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale. ~ Samuel Johnson

And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can't do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can't stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere - an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers - and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people - from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: ~ Arkady Strugatsky

You talk too much." "You are a real communicator!" "Stop daydreaming." "You are creative!" "Don't be so bossy." "You are confident!" "Stop wiggling. Sit still." "You were born to move! ~ Yong Pratt

ASITA AWOKE in the forest thinking about demons. He hadn't for many years. He could remember glimpsing one or two in the past, on the fringes of a famine or a battle, wherever bodies were being harvested. He knew the misery they caused, but misery was no longer Asita's
concern. He had been a forest hermit for fifty years. The affairs of the world had been kept far away, and he passed whole days in a hidden cave when he retreated even from the affairs of animals, much less those of men.

Now Asita knelt by a stream and considered. He distinctly saw demons in his mind's eye. They had first appeared in the dappled sunlight that fell on his eyelids at dawn. Asita slept on boughs strewn over the bare ground, and he liked the play of light and shadow across his eyes in the early morning. His imagination freely saw shapes that reminded him of the market village where he grew up. He could see hawking merchants, women balancing water jugs on
their heads, camels and cara-vans - anything, really - on the screen of his closed eyes.

But never demons, not before this morning. Asita walked into the nearly freezing mountain stream, his body naked except for a loincloth. As an ascetic, he did not wear clothes, not even the robes of a monastic order. Lately he had felt an impulse to travel very high, nearly in sight of the snowcapped peaks on the north-ern border of the Sakya kingdom. Which put him close to other lokas,worlds apart from Earth. Every mortal is c ~ Deepak Chopra

Short film: you can be poetic and you don't have to answer anything. You can make whatever you want. You have creative freedom with short film. ~ Taika Waititi

For god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love ... ~ Carter Heyward

Never underestimate what teens can understand or do. They're smart, creative, and fresh-minded. I wish I was one. ~ Brook Tesla

I never stopped being a mother, and I never stopped being an artist. Which is probably why my kids are so creative. When I'm with my kids I'm creating but I'm still a mom. I don't wear two different hats. My kids have always been on the set with me. I was breastfeeding on set. None of my kids would take a bottle so they could not leave my side for a very long time. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

The most dangerous thing you can do in life is play it safe. ~ Casey Neistat

Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character. ~ Robert Grudin

Of all the creative acts performed by the artist, the most directly legible is drawing ... it is the act that is most directly and spontaneously governed by his nervous and muscular system. ~ Rene Huyghe

As one grows older one must try not to work oneself to death unnecessarily. At least that's how it is with me ... I can scarcely keep pace and must watch out that the creative forces do not chase me around the universe in a wallop. ~ Carl Jung