Creative Process Quotes

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

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their vo

Helen Dunmore

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Robert McKee

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the

Will Self

Why start if you are going to do a half-assed job anyway?

Monika Zands

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

Stephen Fry

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

Roger Ebert

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 trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.

Julia Cameron

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

Julia Cameron

Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea. Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.

Chila Woychik

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

After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one.

Miranda July

Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection.

Jacqueline Patricks

The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

Don Roff

For any creative thought to be contagious, it must first be worthy of a sneeze.

Ryan Lilly

I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I'm very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be.

Elizabeth Gilbert

A child s a special possession from God.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing

Cormac McCarthy

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

Honoré de Balzac

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a vortex" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her "scribbling suit" consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo.

Louisa May Alcott

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of

P.G. Wodehouse

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

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doin

John Green

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

Explore your inner creative genius through the medium you love and enjoy the journey!

Ken Poirot

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so

David McCullough

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.

Jerome Stern

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

Lawrence Wright

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E'yen A. Gardner

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

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

Gary Reilly

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

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

DiAnn Mills

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

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

Life is beautiful dream.

Lailah Gifty Akita

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

Sanober Khan

[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

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

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

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

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

Marcus Valerius Martialis

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

E.A. Bucchianeri

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

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

Richie Norton

I just needed time alone with my own thoughtsGot treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault

Kanye West

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

E.A. Bucchianeri

Pencil. Paper. Forget the world.

Shaun Hick

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

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

Stephanie Lennox

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

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Creative Process Quotes

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