Creativity Quotations

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.
Emily Carr, Artist and Author

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education, dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thoughts, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.
Norbet Platt, Author

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words… By means of art we are sometimes sent – dimly, briefly – revelations unattainable by reason.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Winning Author

Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
Truman Capote, Author

Without imagination of the one kind or of the other, mortal existence is indeed a dreary and prosaic business… Illumined by the imagination, our life, whatever its defeats – is a never-ending unforeseen strangeness and adventure and mystery.
Walter De La Mare, Poet

Interviewer: If your house were on fire, which object would you take with you?
Jean Cocteau: The fire!
Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Filmmaker, Painter and Choreographer

Who am I? the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
Agnes de Mille, Dancer

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born…
Rainer Maria Rilke, Poet

I never find words right away. Poems for me always begin with images and rhythms, shapes, feelings, forms, dances in the back of my mind.
Gary Snyder, Poet

In art, as in life, everything is possible so long as it is based on love.
Marc Chagall, Painter

Life will go on as long as there is someone to sing, to dance, to tell stories, to listen.
Oren Lyons Author

A poet needs to keep his wildness alive inside him.
Stanley Kunitz, Poet

A man's work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus, Philosopher and Novelist

The purpose of art is to heal. I believe that every person is a special kind of artist, rather than the common belief that artists are special kinds of people.
Samuel Avital, Mime

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
Barbara Kingsolver, Author

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler, Author

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good things.
Edgar Degas, Painter

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.
John Locke, Philosopher

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler, Actress, Director, Acting Coach

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton, Poet and Monk

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature.
Salvador Dali, Painter

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington, Musician

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Rumi, Poet

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
Friedrich Nietzche, Philosopher

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Author

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, as an artist, I will answer you, "I am here to live out loud."
Emile Zola, Novelist and Critic