Creative Process Quotes

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.' ~ Tom Robbins

We do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that - the art of it - is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. That's part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And it's a joy to sing, like the birds do. ~ David Byrne

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words. ~ P.D. James

We're trained in school to equate mistakes with bad grades - something to be avoided at all costs. The alpha makers were somehow able to dodge that. They think that mistakes are just part of the creative process and maybe even the best way to learn. ~ Mark Frauenfelder

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

We love to learn because learning feels good. It both satisfies and stimulates curiosity. Reading a good book, having a meaningful conversation, listening to great music - just doing these things make us happy. They have no extrinsic purpose. To give them one takes away from their joy. ~ Zander Sherman

Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches. ~ Jenna Bush

Asking is the first step in the Creative Process, so make it a habit to ask. ~ Rhonda Byrne

I don't like to do things the same way every time. You always want to be evolving as a composer, and if your creative process is exactly the same each time, then how do you expect today's work to be any different from yesterday's? ~ Christopher Tin

To me, music and songwriting is ... part of the intriguing thing is the creative process; you know, the creative thought process. Relying on that ... there is some sort of inspiration there and you can't always put your finger on where it comes from. So, it's always been important for me to have my own thing and, even though I'm inspired by and influenced by many different musicians and styles of music, I was very determined early on to have my own thing. So when I sit down to write I don't necessarily have a particular narrative or message in mind. I'm interested in language and in words. ~ Page Hamilton

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea. ~ Amy Poehler

'The Company' was interesting. I didn't love it, although it might be compelling to someone who isn't a dancer. There wasn't a lot of dialogue, and you were just kind of observing the creative process of choreography and in class. ~ Misty Copeland

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
(Casual Chance, 1964) ~ Colette

I definitely felt that I was put at a very high place to be able to be a part of such a wonderful franchise in cinema history, so I was definitely very driven at doing a great job and having my body look the way it should and just being a part of the creative process. ~ Kristanna Loken

Love is what makes you do everything. It really does conquer all. With my first album, I was writing about empowerment hoping that would make it true. And now it is. I'm in charge. I make the rules. I've been writing since I was nine years old and I'm very much involved in the creative process. And now that I'm in a happier place in my personal life, I'm spitting songs out left and right. ~ Jessie James Decker

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

To be a successful person you often have to create a strong foundation with the bricks others throw at you. ~ Rod Judkins

The reason I dislike talking about the creative process is that I do have a creative process that is a winner and it's a sure thing. ~ Garth Hudson

The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions ... [W]hen the composition of the group is right - enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways - the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant - not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism - that doesn't mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks. ~ Jonah Lehrer

The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always there. And, if you don't acknowledge that, you are doing yourself and the process a disservice. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

Musicians have notes. Painters have paint. Writers have words. ~ Lisa Fantino

The artistic methods of poetry, painting, photography, and writing share certain commonalities of deep composition: spirit, rhythm, thought, and scenery. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

One of the things I've learned is there's no lesson to be learned. You have to resign yourself to the fact that mistakes are going to be made at any time in the creative process. ~ Damon Lindelof

Consuming the content and culture of creatives does not make one a creative. Creating makes a creative. ~ Ryan Lilly

My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people. ~ Jerry Uelsmann

Another mistake is presenting too much background information, and doing so in the first few pages. Writers should begin their stories with the event that kicks off the story, and then spoon-feed us background information only when it's needed to understand what's going on."

[A Conversation with Evan Marshall (Writers Write, September 1999)] ~ Evan Marshall

Because of my poor writing posture, I started walking in the forest every day, and I found it a potent place to be creatively. It changed me in that it was a new way of doing my creative process, and I realised how much I liked being among tall trees. ~ Morris Gleitzman

I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.
[Interview clip in the In Memoriam section of the 85th Academy Awards ceremony, Feb. 24, 2013] ~ Nora Ephron

I think therapy interferes with the creative process. It takes off the edge. ~ Michael O'Donoghue

All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she as extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity. ~ Lewis Hyde

- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!?
- You are creators, you make stuff up all the time! ~ Esther Hicks

Vronsky's interest in art and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had sufficient taste for art to be unable to finish his picture. He ceased painting it because he was dimly conscious that its defects, little noticeable at first, would become striking if he went on. ~ Leo Tolstoy

For me personally, The Organic Creative Process helped me to discover what kind of actor I want to be; but this is a process that goes beyond acting. It actually revealed to me what I want to do in my life and that I have to work hard to make it real. ~ Giovanni Morassutti

The eyes of the creative spirit can see in all directions. ~ Orna Ross

Every creative act, however small, enriches our species and the world around us. To find and nurture talent, is to be truly wealthy. ~ Stewart Stafford

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.
[Commencement Speech; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999] ~ Anna Quindlen

In 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers provided a detailed analysis of that creative process in The Mind of the Maker. She developed the relevance of the imago Dei for understanding artistic creation in explicitly trinitarian terms. In every act of creation there is a controlling idea (the Father), the energy which incarnates that idea through craftsmanship in some medium (the Son), and the power to create a response in the reader (the Spirit). These three, while separate in identity, are yet one act of creation. So the ancient credal statements about the Trinity are factual claims about the mind of the maker created in his image. Sayers delves into the numerous literary examples, in what is one of the most fascinating accounts ever written both of the nature of literature and of the imago Dei. While some readers may feel she has a tendency to take a good idea too far, The Mind of the Maker remains an indispensable classic of Christian poetics. ~ Leland Ryken

Write your story before it dies one single breath at time. Nobody cares if is the truth as long as it really happened. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe. ~ Neil Gaiman

A composition - and every work of art is one - is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process. ~ Jostein Gaarder

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process ~ James Baldwin

we may say that History develops, Art stands still ~ E. M. Forster

I believe the essence of translation lies in taking what is unsaid in a work from one language to another. Words have memories, a history of their own. There are no two words with exactly the same meaning. To recreate the unspoken in another language, one needs to understand what went into making the original; then one must dismantle it and rebuild it in the other language. ~ Vivek Shanbhag

Chaos is the first step in the creative process. ~ Jill Bolte Taylor

Re-imagined or reinterpreted source material offers unique perspectives into the creative process. I like hearing a band cover another band's tune. I dig seeing multiple interpretations of a Shakespearean play. I'm inspired by reading a creative team's successful take on the origin of Superman.

Sometimes the remakes can surprise us, sometimes they're tired, and sometimes they fail, but they are almost always enlightening. I root for the success of a remake. A remake can breathe new life into something forgotten. I want to see something bad turned into something good or something good turned into something phenomenal. ~ Mike Walton

Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. ~ Marian Keyes

Never EVER attack another person for what they write. Particularly if they are a younger writer. You may not understand what they are trying to say, and perhaps they don't either, but to interfere in the creative process of a young person is absolutely one of the most horrible things another writer can do. The karma of that manner of attack will come back to find you. ~ ~Theresa Griffin Kennedy~

Yes, you are creative and in slow, languid times, creativity peers out of your soul like a field mouse from its burrow at night. ~ Michele Jennae

If you stop your creative process every time you think you need to cheer yourself up, or rid yourself of emotional conflicts, your life will be over before you can create anything of any real significance. ~ Robert Fritz

Some say that to struggle in life is the point of it all. Wisdom says that it is not in the struggling that life's creative process precedes, but in the deep knowing that your victory is already won. ~ Denis John George

I could write about how I feel when I sing, write and create something from heartbreak, sorrow, sadness or just simply nothingness. How nothingness can become the most beautiful, unexplainable feeling that makes you forget about gravity for an hour. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the market place and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination. ~ Eric Hoffer

One of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed. ~ Ralph Caplan

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. ~ Octavia E. Butler

You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

Loving, like prayer, is a power as well as a process. It's curative. It is creative. ~ Zona Gale

MFA in a Box is designed to help you to find the courage to put truth into words and to understand that writing is a life-and-death endeavor - but that nothing about a life-and-death endeavor keeps it from being laugh-out-loud funny. ~ John Rember

Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong - in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art ... Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn't even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art. ~ Neil Gaiman

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time. ~ Julia Cameron

Your ideas, thoughts and intentions are the seeds of creation, and your attention is the powerful tool that drives energy toward the object or outcome that you want to create. Your positive emotion and passionate action add power to the creative process. ~ Ilchi Lee

Painting is of course multifarious, and for all of us the goal is, gaining control without impeding the creative process. ~ Don Farrell

I'm a firm believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic. If we put too much structure on it, we will kill it. So there's a fine balance between providing some structure and safety - financial and emotional - but also letting it get messy and stay messy for a while. To do that, you need to assess each situation to see what's called for. And then you need to become what's called for. ~ Ed Catmull

Looking at the creative process is like looking into a crystal: no matter which facet we gaze into, we see all the others reflected. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch

The unencumbered mind recalls all that it has read, all that pleased the eye, and delighted the ear, and reflecting on every idea which either observation, or experience, or discourse has produced, gains new information by every reflection. The intellect contemplates all the former scenes of life; views by anticipation those that are yet to come; and blends all ideas of past and future in the actual enjoyment of the present moment. ~ Attributed To Zimmerman By Henry M. Stanley

You kind of attribute this magic to music and as you meet the people you realize that they don't contain the magic. They just channel it a little bit sometimes, but they never possess it. They never own it. ~ Kyle Morton

Photographers don't take pictures. They create images. ~ Mark Denman

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?
[Remember This: Write What You Don't Know (New York Times Book Review, December 31, 1989)] ~ Ken Kesey

Striving for perfection can get in the way during the early stages of the creative process. ~ David Kelley

I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place. ~ David Cook

Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades ... It springs newborn out of a boredom with the finality and over-saturation of Abstract-Expressionism, which, by its own esthetic logic, is the END of art, the glorious pinnacle of the long pyramidal creative process. Stifled by this rarefied atmosphere, some young painters turn back to some less exalted things like Coca-Cola, ice-cream sodas, big hamburgers, super-markets and 'EAT' signs. They are eye-hungry; they pop ... ~ Robert Indiana

These are people from everywhere, from Lawrence Livermore and JPL and Sandia National Labs, the FBI, all over the place, real scientists who see what we're doing, and they consistently thank us. "I agree your results aren't always right," they'll say, "but your methods are clearly showing that science is a re-creative process, and it's an interesting process because it's messy, and no other shows show that." ~ Adam Savage

When you start to engage with your creative processes, it shakes up all your impulses, and they all kind of inform one another. ~ Jeff Bridges

We didn't want to disrupt the creative process. We have the chance to make the films we want because the films are not expensive. It's very rare to be able to do that. It's completely pure. ~ Julie Delpy

Being at the genesis of the creative process is definitely something I want to keep doing. It's just such a great buzz. ~ Chris O'Dowd

The creative process; I enjoy thinking up the stories and situations for my books. ~ Judy Blume

From the outside looking in, i think my life would appear very isolated, occupying a huge empty space, with hollow-sounding, emotional echoes. But in reality, this solitary sanctuary i inhabit, allows my artistic nature to sing at the top of its lungs. My feelings have the space they need to breathe. And my art can gain the momentum, it requires, to bubble up to the surface of consciousness. For me, creativity is a chaotic and quiet hybrid, an entity that seeks a safe place to call home. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

I'm a big believer in cooking your own meals. It makes it much easier not only to ensure that you eat fresh foods but also to follow the second rule of eating (see previous chapter), which advises incorporating as many colors, tastes, textures, and aromas as possible into one's meal. Beyond those benefits, I feel that cooking celebrates self-respect, and it's especially important on the Warrior Diet. Through cooking, you can control exactly what you put inside your body. It's a creative process, where you use trial and error to determine what you like.You can use different herbs and spices to increase or balance flavors, aromas, and textures.You're not a scavenger on the Warrior Diet. ~ Ori Hofmekler

I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as an assignment. No one reads for fun, or to be subversive or to get turned on to something. It's just like doing math at school. I mean, how often do we sit down and do trigonometry for fun, to relax. I've thought about this, the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it. ~ T. Coraghessan Boyle

Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection. ~ Jacqueline Patricks

We can imagine how to create and be creative on a beach in a cosmic sky. No grain of sand is merely just sandy; with imagination at hand the sand can become whatever you fancy. ~ Jennifer Sodini

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark. ~ Wallace Stegner

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit... I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it... I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before... The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That's where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started... In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame. ~ Miles Davis

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I couldn't sustain myself very long on the poems of others. I had to go out from myself and literature, look around in the world and lay hold of other spheres of reality. ~ Zbigniew Herbert

Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else's snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It's world-creating.

It's raw, exposed dreaming. It's humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next.

It's what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience. ~ Laurie Perez

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. ~ Stephen King

Your experiences are the foundation for your story; your imagination takes it from there. ~ J.R. Young

There just is exponentially more money in the movie business than in the music business. As a result there are more people involved in the creative process. ~ Adam Duritz

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.
[As quoted in the author biography on Mankell's official website.] ~ Henning Mankell

You will usually discover that the creative process itself is truly the most healing part of any art therapy experience. ~ Cathy A. Malchiodi

It is not possible to be original by trying to be original - those who attempt this in the arts will be merely avant-garde. Originality is the product of an impulse to intense and overwhelming that it bursts the conventions and produces something new - again more by accident than design. ~ Michael Foley

People are always going to find fault with anything you do, any process that you're a part of. The creative process means taking risks, I've taken risks and I've made mistakes, but the bottom line is, could anyone else have done any better ? I have to believe that what I created was worthwhile. ~ Zach Braff

Of course, from time to time, I want to do everything myself and be more involved on my own with the creative process. But I don't mind the collaboration at all. ~ Michel Gondry

I am the kind of guy who has never taken myself too seriously. I mean, I am very serious about what I do; I'm very serious about the creative process and everything, but at the end of the day, I am just another lucky geek who got to live out a dream, you know? ~ Corey Taylor

It always seemed to me," she said at last, "that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist, if only because the creative process is such a lonely one. I should imagine it must be all the more difficult for a woman. ~ Richard Yates

Imagine consultants coming into an organization to help people look at their most routine daily action … as extensions of the creative process. ~ Shaun McNiff

When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured. ~ Joni Mitchell

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing. ~ Alfonso Ribeiro

As in creating some significant work the artist first experiences something akin to dream awareness that becomes clarified in the creative process itself, so we must first have a vision of the future sufficiently entrancing that it will sustain us in the transformation of the human project that is now in process. ~ Thomas Berry

It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way. ~ Twyla Tharp