Creative Work Quotes

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything) ~ T. S. Eliot

If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing ~ Glenn Gould

Be always adventurous in the creating and sharing of your art in any form. Take risks and do not settle for playing safe. If you hesitate you are restraining your creativity. Some will appreciate your creative work and others will not. Just be free in expressing the creative you! ~ Alison Blackmore

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis. ~ Upton Sinclair

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. ~ Austin Kleon

The treasure secretly gathered in your heart will become evident through your creative work. ~ Albrecht Durer

Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings ... pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is! ~ Bill Bonner

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

Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all. ~ Anton Chekhov

All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur. ~ Tennessee Williams

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

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. ~ Albert Einstein

In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Saying that programmers should just accomplish twice as much doesn't work. They can gain skills and effectiveness, but they cannot get more done on demand. More time at the desk does not equal increased productivity for creative work. ~ Kent Beck

Nobody tells people who are beginners - and I really wish somebody had told this to me - that all of us who do creative work ... get into it because we have good taste. ~ Ira Glass

...trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights. Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one's own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one's creative work. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency ~ Leo Burnett

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

I don't believe in the model of pure inspiration. All of my creative work stems from a dialogue with others. ~ Rachel Kushner

The creative work place is based on a triangle with three vertices - culture, method, and people. ~ Pearl Zhu

In other words, if Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy showed more than their fair share of pathology it was due less to the requirements of their creative work than to the personal sufferings caused by the unhealthy conditions of a Russian society nearing collapse. If so many American poets and playwrights committed suicide or ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol it was not their creativity that did it but an artistic scene that promised much, gave few rewards and left nine out of ten artists neglected if not ignored. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every manifestation of creative work is a means of communication which allows one spirit to recognize another. ~ Otokar Brezina

Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement? ~ Karen Horney

Your mood doesn't really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk. ~ Julia Cameron

In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort. ~ Bertrand Russell

Being an artist:
And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate , I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve to the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare's mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. ~ Virginia Woolf

Most agree that a useful definition of creative work is that it includes a combination of novelty and value. Creativity requires novelty because tried-and-true solutions are not creative, even if they are ingenious and useful. And creative works must be valuable (useful or illuminating to at least some members of the population) because a work that is merely odd is not creative. This two-pronged definition of creativity also provides an explanation of why the creative can lie close to the insane (unusual but valueless behavior). ~ Alice W. Flaherty

Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that. ~ Julia Cameron

[M]any females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer residing with males or peddling their asses on the street, thereby having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for somebody else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best - if able to get a "good" job - co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it. ~ Valerie Solanas

When you flow like water you bring all of your talents and resources to your creative work ... Flow around every obstacle you encounter, including any you've erected yourself. ~ Eric Maisel

Creative work is one of life's greatest pleasures, and the only one we will gladly interrupt. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

I began illustrating children's books because of a growing disillusionment with the sort of work I was doing in the advertising industry. Book publishing offered me the chance to be far more creative. ~ Graeme Base

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

It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes to close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in -at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may serve to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion on all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason -so it seems to me- relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass. ~ Friedrich Schiller

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. ~ Betty Friedan

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner. ~ Philip K. Dick

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity ... ~ Marianne Williamson

When I'm working, I'm going to avoid all media. No newspapers, no magazines, no movies, no radio, no TV. I'm just going to do creative work. ~ Drew Carey

You have to be prepared to give creative work 150%. I hear a lot of young people talking about life/work balance, which I think is great when you're in your 30s. If you're in your 20s and already talking about that, I don't think you will achieve your goals. If you really want to build a powerful career, and make an impact, then you have to be prepared to put in blood, sweat, and tears. ~ Ellen Lupton

The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas. ~ Rebecca Solnit

One of the critical skills in creative work is note-taking. Practically all the great geniuses of our culture, ranging from Leonardo to Edison, from Hemingway to Picasso, have been almost pathological note-takers. ~ Lauri Jarvilehto

To me, creative work is labor, like any other kind of labor. It's got value, and it takes your time, and it's useful to people, depending. ~ John Darnielle

I highly recommend Marci Alboher's One Person/ Multiple Careers. It includes lots of practical strategies for living the slash. Malcom Gladwell is also a constant source of inspiration for me. In his book Outliers, Gladwell proposes that there are three criteria for meaningful work - complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward - and that these can often be found in creative work.2 These criteria absolutely fit with what cultivating meaningful work means in the context of the Wholehearted journey. Last, I think everyone should read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist3 - I try to read it at least once a year. It's a powerful way of seeing the connections between our gifts, our spirituality, and our work (slashed or not) and how they come together to create meaning in our lives. ~ Brene Brown

The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof, but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by GUESSING. ~ George Polya

The field of scientific abstraction encompasses independent kingdoms of ideas and of experiments and within these, rulers whose fame outlasts the centuries. But they are not the only kings in science. He also is a king who guides the spirit of his contemporaries by knowledge and creative work, by teaching and research in the field of applied science, and who conquers for science provinces which have only been raided by craftsmen. ~ Fritz Haber

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

Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, it's fed. That is why beholding someone else's creative word, images, idea, fills us up, and inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years. ~ Stephen Leacock

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through. ~ Ira Glass

I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has yet come into being. ~ Carl Jung

Our biggest goal is to continue to force ourselves to always start our creative work on a white page and not take advantage of past successes and challenging ourselves. ~ Guy Laliberte

If no one's doing the creative work that you want to do, do it yourself. ~ Kate Baldwin

The only legitimate basis of creative work lies in the courageous recognition of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous - so full of hope. ~ Joseph Conrad

For me the major turning point in my working life was when I figured out that the work I produced when I felt inspired wasn't any different from the work I produced when I felt uninspired
at least a few months later. I think that "inspiration" has to do with your own confidence in your ideas, your blood sugar, the external pressures in your life, and a million other factors only tangentially related to the actual quality of the work. If creative work makes you sane and happy (and if it supports you financially), it's terrible to harness it to something you can't control, like "inspiration"
it sucks to only be happy when something you can't control occurs. ~ Cory Doctorow

Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dämonisch. ~ Haruki Murakami

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. ~ Stanley Kubrick

The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time. ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

When she wasn't painting, when she didn't have creative work to occupy her, she became aware of a growing physical apprehension, like she was standing beneath a crane that was holding a piano aloft; at any moment she felt that the cables could snap and all that weight could fall upon her with a fatal crash. ~ Joe Hill

The part of the Masculine principle seems to be that of directing a certain inherent energy toward the Feminine principle, and thus starting into activity the creative processes. But the Feminine principle is the one always doing the active creative work - and this is so on all planes. And yet, each principle is incapable of operative energy without the assistance of the other. In some of the forms of life, the two principles are combined in one organism. For that matter, everything in the organic world manifests both genders - there is always the Masculine present in the Feminine form, and the Feminine form. The Hermetic Teachings include much regarding the operation of the two principles of Gender in the production and manifestation of various forms of energy, etc., but we do not deem it expedient to go into detail regarding the same at this point, because we are unable to back up the same with scientific proof, for the reason that science has not as yet progressed thus far. But the example we have given you of the phenomena of the electrons or corpuscles will show you that science is on the right path, and will also give you a general idea of the underlying principles. ~ Three Initiates

I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work - he is in touch with the child. He is not rational; he is impulsive and extremely emotional. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Theater is the crucible where we can create the dynamics of life without suffering the flames of their combustion. ~ Tom Althouse

I have been under considerable pressure to buy at least a laptop computer. I have always turned the suggestions down for the reason that I have never done creative work on a typewriter. There is to me a lack of empathy. ~ Winston Graham

I need the enchantment of creative work to help me forget life's mean pettinesses. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader pres ~ Ayn Rand

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable. ~ Bela Bartok

We acquire a sense of worth either by realizing our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us
be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions and the like. Of the three, the path of self-realization is the most difficult. It is taken only when other avenues to a sense of worth are more or less blocked. Men of talent have to be encouraged and goaded to engage in creative work. Their groans and laments echo through the ages. Action is a highroad to self-confidence and esteem. ~ Eric Hoffer

As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends. ~ Lawrence Lessig

It's really important to find a humble approach to your own creative work, your own business work. To recognize that you can't do everything yourself. ~ Adrian Grenier

Mr. Russell is a great believer in versatility in all creative work. In any physical work he believes one can work many hours at a time, but in mental, creative work he believes one can do his best only for two hours at a time on any one subject, but he can work another two hours on another subject with equal freshness. He therefore sometimes works two hours a day on each of five different creations, and in that way can live five lives at a time. ~ Walter Russell

Attempt always to uncover the beauty in everyday surroundings. If you cannot find it, then be the one to create it. ~ Stefan Cupka

I think that creative work, music in particular, is a conveyor of inner emotional life. I don't feel one way all the time, so I don't want my music to feel the same way all the time. ~ Kyp Malone

While it may feel natural to devote yourself to your creative work and succumb to feelings of separation and alienation, it nevertheless isn't a terrific idea in terms of your overall happiness and health. ~ Eric Maisel

There's a great body of people who flower at night, who feel night is their time. Night is the time people truly become individuals, because all the familiar things are dark and done, all the restrictions on freedom are removed. Many artists work at night - it is particularly conducive to creative work. Many of us attuned to night are not artists but are embattled against the official, organized, righteous day people who are completely bound by their switchboards and their red tape. ~ John Crosby

All the world's a stage. Creative work is a kind of theater. The stage is your studio, your desk, or your workstation. The costume is your outfit - your painting pants, your business suit, or that funny hat that helps you think. The props are your materials, your tools, and your medium. The script is just plain old time. An hour here, or an hour there - just time measured out for things to happen. ~ Austin Kleon

We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age. ~ El Lissitzky

Architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. Creative work is expressed in our time as a union of technology and humanity. ~ Kenzo Tange

Habits of an empowerED teacher: "read, notice, think, make theories about how writing works, imagine possibilities, write yourself; it isn't magic, it's just slow, creative work. ~ Penny Kittle

It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul. When it is ripped completely free of you, the wound must bleed for a while. How similar it is to letting go of a dream, your hope, or your heart's desire. You must open up and let it drain. ~ Lynn Cullen

Education must lead us from the irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgment. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. Therefore, let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work. ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates. ~ Friedrich Schiller

I used to write in bed, starting when I woke up. I believe that creative work comes from our subconscious mind, so I try to keep the gap between sleep and writing as minimal as possible. ~ Marian Keyes

I focus for periods of time on creative work and I'm very insular during those times - not a lot of socializing. I play when I want. That means I can take off on a retreat, catch a matinee, make friends. My core desired feelings are my time management system. ~ Danielle LaPorte

In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design. ~ Brian Wildsmith

Most creative work is a process of people passing ideas and inspirations from the past into the future and adding their own creativity along the way. ~ Joichi Ito

Politics itself is so unsexy, isn't it? But when the politics in creative works are really explored - not used as a vehicle - the results can be really interesting. ~ Marisa Tomei

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
"Visit to The World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 1964 ~ Isaac Asimov

Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

We bury the men who do the nation's creative work under layers of administrators and mountains of memoranda. We shrivel creativity by endless frustrations. ~ Hyman Rickover

All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out. ~ Charles James

The neurotic exhausts himself not only in self-preoccupations like hypochondrial fears and all sorts of fantasies, but also in others: those around him on whom he is dependent become his therapeutic work project; he takes out his subjective problems on them. But people are not clay to be molded; they have needs and counter-wills of their own. The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own. Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or "bad" one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this "badness" by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his "creative" work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the w ~ Ernest Becker

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. ~ William Plomer

In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing. ~ Elena Ferrante

Lord,
I pray that you will let my talent bring JOY and BEAUTY to a world that sometimes is dark and discouraging. ~ Jennifer Allwood

When are programmers happy? They're happy when they're not underutilized - when they're not bored - and also when they're not overburdened with inappropriate specifications or meaningless bureaucracies. In other words, programmers are happiest when they're working efficiently. This is a general preference in creative work. ~ Eric S. Raymond

Creating and producing creative work, to me, those are all happy accidents. ~ Jim Lee

I mean, contrary to the contemporary version of it, classical liberalism (which remember was pre-capitalist, and in fact, anti-capitalist) focused on the right of people to control their own work, and the need for free creative work under your own control - for human freedom and creativity. So to a classical liberal, wage labor under capitalism would have been considered totally immoral, because it frustrates the fundamental need of people to control their own work: you're a slave to someone else. ~ Noam Chomsky

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator. ~ Eric Temple Bell

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky