creativity Quotes

“We are born makers. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.”

“I’ve come to believe that creativity is the mechanism that allows learning to seep into our being and become practice. The Asaro tribe of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea has a beautiful saying: ‘Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.’”

“Stay in your own lane. Comparison kills creativity and joy.”

“The last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create . . . ”

Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.

“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work.”

“Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’s, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it”

Sometimes the right person tells the right story at the right moment, and through a combination of luck and design, a creative expression gains new force.

“Your art would follow nature, just as a pupil imitates his master; ... your art is almost God’s grandchild.”

“It seemed as if New England was a region given up to the dreams of fancy and the unrestrained experiments of innovators.”

“Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life.”

“You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, and inner peace - arise from beyond the mind.”

“He wondered what it would be like to have a mother whose stories were inside her head instead of marching across the television screen all day long.”

“Expectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.”

“Since no one can read, every candidate is designated by a symbol. Wisely these men choose to represent themselves with useful things - knife, bottle, matches, cooking pot.”

“Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”

“Jess drew the way some people drank whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body. Lord, he loved to draw.”

“It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate – ”

“People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place.”

“Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.”

“Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.”

“The atmosphere was heady. One could find a party with relative ease on any day of the week. However, it wouldn’t be fair to say that the Lost Generation was hedonistic or irresponsible. As a whole, the various writers of the group maintained high levels of productivity and creativity throughout the turbulent twenties.”

″‘What a curious helmet you’ve got!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is that your invention too?’ The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I’ve invented a better one than that – like a sugar loaf. When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a very little way to fall, you see – But there was the danger of falling into it, to be sure. That happened to me once – and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.‘”

″‘I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.′ ‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.”

“She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs – or, at least, it wasn’t exactly running, but a new invention for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet: then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn’t caught hold of the door-post.”

“‘Think about it, Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.’”

“Forward-thinking teachers and school administrators across the country are creating a whole range of alternatives to cookie-cutter teaching and evaluation methods, such as the use of student portfolios and exhibitions in addition to conventional exams to assess students’ progress.”

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

“You sit down . . . You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively.”

“The book has somehow to be adapted to the body, and at a venture one would say that women’s books should be shorter, more concentrated, than those of men, and framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be.”

“This is the challenge of creative thinking—as you open the spiritual channels of your mind, God can download divine, creative thoughts into your brain. Ask God to enlarge your capacity for thinking, to take the limits off.”

“Order will ease your load and free your mind for greater peace, joy, and creativity. By more effectively ordering your day, you will gain a sense of control, a sense of purpose, increased productivity, an environment of creativity, and a greater focus and flow of accomplishments.”

“The warrior knows that their imagination is not a place to escape but to create.”

“Humanity yearns so desperately to equal God’s great creativity. In some creations, how we shine: music, dance, storyweaving, wine.”

“Many people suffer because of the false supposition on which they have based their lives. That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt. But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human condition. ”

“But to yell at your creativity, saying, “You must earn money for me!” is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.”

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.”

“Creating is no problem - problem solving is not creating.”

″...the Devil is a projection of your own psyche, but you have not grow wise enough to learn how to use your creativity constructively.”

Creativity is subdued by disengaging narrative and emotionally charged scenes fall flat

“Whenever the students had free time, they were permitted to go to the Lightlbulb Lab in the back of the classroom. They expressed their ideas creatively through drawing and writing. Lilly went often. She had a lot of ideas. ”

There were some things I liked about this, and some I didn’t. I love that Clarice Bean is a bookworm, addicted to the Ruby Redford series about a young girl who lives a secret double life as an international spy. I liked the creativity in the text layout, meandering about the page as Clarice’s thoughts meander during class.

A number of people see the Cheshunt school’s headmaster, Mr Karle (“the Kraken”) as a representation of Hitler. In a quote on the book’s front flyleaf Terry Lane is reported to have called The Gathering “a dark, grim allegory of fascism”.

“Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses.”

“Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.”

“To others gardening is a form of creative abandon. To me it is a way of exerting control upon my surroundings.”

“And that’s the whole poem,” he said. “Do you like it, Piglet?” “All except the shillings,” said Piglet. “I don’t think they ought to be there.” “They wanted to come in after the pounds,” explained Pooh, “so I let them. It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.”

“Hallo, Pooh,” said Rabbit. “Hallo, Rabbit,” said Pooh dreamily. “Did you make that song up?” “Well, I sort of made it up,” said Pooh. “It isn’t Brain,” he went on humbly, “because You Know Why, Rabbit; but it comes to me sometimes.” “Ah!” said Rabbit, who never let things come to him, but always went and fetched them.

“I shall call it—let me see—the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill.”

“I could have made it much more flowery if I’d had a little more time to think it over.”

“The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a story out of our own heads!” “Why, it’s as easy as wink,” said Anne. “It’s easy for you because you have an imagination,” retorted Diana, “but what would you do if you had been born without one?”

Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

The P. O. was a capital little institution, and flourished wonderfully, for nearly as many queer things passed through it as through the real post office. Tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, rubbers, invitations, scoldings, and puppies. The old gentleman liked the fun, and amused himself by sending odd bundles, mysterious messages, and funny telegrams, and his gardener, who was smitten with Hannah’s charms, actually sent a love letter to Jo’s care. How they laughed when the secret came out, never dreaming how many love letters that little post office would hold in the years to come.

He certainly did add ‘spirit’ to the meetings, and ‘a tone’ to the paper, for his orations convulsed his hearers and his contributions were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never sentimental. Jo regarded them as worthy of Bacon, Milton, or Shakespeare, and remodeled her own works with good effect, she thought.

Amy fell to painting with undiminished ardor. An artist friend fitted her out with his castoff palettes, brushes, and colors, and she daubed away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on land or sea. Her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer, if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.

The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his ‘sewinsheen’, a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go ‘wound and wound’.

He is innocent and responsive to influence. He has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him.