I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t have to walk alone. You can work in an office — I’ve worked in offices for the past 15 years and written five novels while doing it. The creative life is forgiving: You can betray it all you want, again and again, and no matter how many times you do, it will always take you back.

~ Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman Creative Process Creativity Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft

The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.

~ Stephanie Lennox

Stephanie Lennox Artists Artists Life Creative Process Creativity Motivation Motivational Writers Writers On Writing Writing Advice Writing Life Writing Process

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

Jennifer Sodini Consciousness Raising Cosmic Consciousness Creative Process Creativity Imagination Inspirational Love Spiritual Spirituality

Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in Eng

~ Glen Cook

Glen Cook Creative Process Creativity Diligence Discipline Resilience Talent Writing

Pencil. Paper. Forget the world.

~ Shaun Hick

Shaun Hick Author Creating Creative Process Creativity Paper Pencil Writing Writing Process

The show must go on, and so must The Book.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

E.a. Bucchianeri Arts And Humanities Books Creative People Creative Process Creativity Novels Perseverance Reading Twitter Quotes Writers On Writing Writers Quotes Writing Writing Advice Writing Advice Process

You can’t let fear and indecision sink your creativity—they do not easily release their hold.

~ Richie Norton

Richie Norton Business Creative Creative Process Creative Thinking Creative Work Creativity Fear Fearless

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

Charlotte Eriksson Art Beautiful Chaos Creative Process Creativity Heartbreak Inspiration Music Poetry Singing Writing Writing Inspiration

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

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

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Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

~ Marcus Valerius Martialis

Marcus Valerius Martialis Creative Process Creativity Literary Theory Literature Tradition Writers Writing Writing Process

The trick, of course, is to lose one day and come back to win the next. But that is possible only when we draw healthy pleasure and confidence from our creative processes.

~ John H. Lienhard

John H. Lienhard Creative Process Creativity Losing Winning

Never forget,Each day that we have together is a precious gift.In the web of daily living, we are creating character.Let's take the time to create memories, listen and observe.Time flees, and it does not return.If we lose today, it is gone forever.Let's live for the present, and be prepared for the future. Let's grow strong, let's grow bigger, let's grow TOGETHER!

~ Lina Cuartas

Lina Cuartas Creative Ideas Creative Process Future Memories Parenting Present Relationships

In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering for yourself in the great football stadium of

~ T.c. Boyle

T.c. Boyle Belief Creative Process Self Confidence Self Trust Writing

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

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sometimes i wake upin the middleof the nightand findpoetry splatteredall over my bed.

~ Sanober Khan

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The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation p

~ Robert Hughes

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Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.

~ Mark Batterson

Mark Batterson Creative Process Faith Inspiration Prayer

Life is beautiful dream.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Lailah Gifty Akita Creative Process Creativity And Attitude Dream Inspiration Inspiring Life Motivational Wonder

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revi

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Creative Process Exercise Failure Imagination Revision Writing

All that night he thought like boomerangs fly: an idea would shoot way off into the distance, all the way to a caravan in Hollywood and, for a moment, when he had got as far away from school and reality as it was possible to go, he was reasonably happy; then it would begin the return journey, thump him on the head, and leave him in exactly the place he had started from. And all the time it got nearer and nearer to the morning.

~ Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby Creative Process Dreams Imagination Thoughts Visions

To write is to feel the dance of your soul swirling in a dream that drips imagination onto paper.

~ Diann Mills

Diann Mills Creative Process Imagination Writing

Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

~ Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett Creative Process Disappointment Heartbreak Imagination Trade In Writers Writing

Creativity is as much about order against freedom, control versus rebellion, organisation against disorder as it is about straightforward imagination.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Carla H. Krueger Creative Process Freedom To Write Imagination

My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter.

~ Gary Reilly

Gary Reilly Creative Process Humor Imagination Writer S Block Writing

You can't force creatives into a box. If you try, they'll no longer be creative. And no one will want your box.

~ Ryan Lilly

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To express yourself in a creative way you don't need structure you need an empty mind.

~ E'yen A. Gardner

E'yen A. Gardner Creative Process Inspirational Life Spiritual Life

When dreams come true creativity becomes art.

~ Martin Schuster

Martin Schuster Creative People Creative Process Creative Thinking Dream

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning -- it'll be

~ Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Aide Memoire Creative Process Ideas Memory Notes Writing

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final s

~ Alice Munro

Alice Munro Creative Process Inspiration Memory Writing

When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of m

~ Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke Creative Process Magic Writing

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

Kyle Morton Artists Creative Process Magic Music

You have enough to create what you want.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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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

Zander Sherman Creative Process Curiosity Education Happiness Love Of Learning Meaning

When someone asks me what a song is about, it’s like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song.

~ Kyle Morton

Kyle Morton Creative Process Meaning Music Song Songwriting

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed ‘fundamental’ by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn—possibly even arrogant—enough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself.

~ Ashim Shanker

Ashim Shanker Arrogance Creative Process Defiance Doubt Fear Fundamental Truth Lacerations Questioning Mind Self Consciousness Self Esteem Self Growth Temerity

[When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I think the best advice I can give is to wait for the book that compels you to write it-- the one that you eat, sleep, and breathe. If you try to force yourself to create an epic story, you will feel the ensuing drudgery quite acutely-- and worse, your readers will feel it too. Conversely, if you wait for the book that won't leave you alone until you finish it, your readers will feel that energy and it will make it difficult for them to put the book down until they have finished it!

~ Kealohilani

Kealohilani Advice Advice For Writers Creative Process Humor Inspirational Writing Writing Process

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams.

~ James Hampton

James Hampton Advice Creative Process Writing Process

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing an

~ Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz Creative Process Urge Writers Writing

But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

~ James Baldwin

James Baldwin Artist Creative Process Writers Writing

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig Creative Process Creative Writing Writers Writing Process Zen
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