Inspiring Quotes to Ignite Your Creativity

"You don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

- Bob Ross

"Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

- Bruce Garrabrandt

"You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."

- Jack London

"Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise."

- Julia Cameron

"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."

- Donatella Versace

"Creativity is just connecting things."

- Steve Jobs

"Creativity takes courage."

- Henri Matisse

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul."

- Dieter F. Uchtdorf

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

- C.S. Lewis

"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found."

- James Russell Lowell

"The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought."

- Albert Einstein

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."

- Pablo Picasso

"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul."

- George Bernard Shaw

"A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working."

- Henri Matisse

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."

- Mary Lou Cook

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns."

- Edward de Bono

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle."

- Steve Jobs

"There is no innovation and creativity without failure."

- Brené Brown

"When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes."

- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination."

- Albert Einstein

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent van Gogh

"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen."

- Oprah Winfrey

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."

- Edwin Land

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."

- Albert Einstein

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"If you’re alive, you’re a creative person."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will."

- George Bernard Shaw

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

- John Cleese

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."

- Steve Jobs

"Every artist was first an amateur."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Everything you can imagine is real."

- Pablo Picasso

"There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period."

- Brené Brown

"Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference."

- Nolan Bushnell

"The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas."

- Abe Tannenbaum

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."

- George Lois

"There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t."

- Tori Amos

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos."

- Mary Shelley

"True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse.’"

- Arthur Rimbaud

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."

- Virginia Woolf

"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

"You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it."

- Robin Williams

"Imagination rules the world."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."

- Frank Capra

"Replace fear with curiosity."

- Steven Spielberg

"Creativity is the art of concealing your source."

- Coco Chanel

"All creative people want to do the unexpected."

- Hedy Lamarr

"Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits."

- Twyla Tharp

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."

- Michelangelo

"To have a great idea, have a lot of them."

- Thomas A. Edison

"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work."

- Rita Mae Brown

"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."

- John Updike

"Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"In the world of creativity, laziness translates into an inability to be rigorous enough to create fearlessly. It makes us plagiarise or water our creativity down to make it more acceptable to the public."

- Shah Rukh Khan

"I apply the term ‘creativity’ broadly… it’s problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that’s where creativity comes in."

- Edwin Catmull

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

- Winston Churchill

"If an organization values innovation, you can assume it’s safe to speak up with new ideas, leaders will listen, and your voice matters."

- Adam Grant

"For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate."

- Margaret Heffernan

"Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow."

- William Pollard

"Creativity is… seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God."

- Michele Shea

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

- Steve Jobs

"The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation."

- Bob Iger

"I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts."

- Bill Gates

"If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect."

- Steven Johnson

"What is now proved was once only imagined."

- William Blake

"Trust that little voice in your head that says ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if…’; And then do it."

- Duane Michals

"Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart."

- Adam Grant

"Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way."

- Twyla Tharp

"The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

- Scott Adams

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

- Herman Melville

"Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity. I want people moving and shaking the earth and they’re going to make mistakes."

- Ross Perot

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."

- Salvador Dali

"Creativity flows when curiosity is stoked."

- Neil Blumenthal

"To me there’s no creativity without boundaries. If you’re gonna write a sonnet, it’s 14 lines, so it’s solving the problem within the container."

- Lorne Michaels

"Ideas control the world."

- James A. Garfield

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model."

- Vincent van Gogh

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

- Ayn Rand

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world."

- Malcolm Gladwell

"Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."

- William Plomer

"Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it."

- Dee Hock

"For us, creativity means thinking about the lives of our audience and how to connect with them."

- Anna Wintour

"Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity."

- Marina Abramovic

"Vision is the art of seeing the invisible."

- Jonathan Swift

"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision."

- James McNeill Whistler

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

- Carl Jung

"Vision is the true creative rhythm."

- Robert Delaunay

"All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result."

- Stephen R. Covey

"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision."

- Edith Wharton

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions."

- Albert Einstein

"An idea is salvation by imagination."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"Imagination creates reality."

- Richard Wagner

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."

- Stephen Covey

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless."

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

- Albert Einstein

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."

- Carl Sagan

"The imagination is man’s power over nature."

- Wallace Stevens

"The power of imagination makes us infinite."

- John Muir

"The imagination is a muscle. If it is not exercised, it atrophies."

- Neil Gaiman

"He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet."

- Joseph Joubert

"True intelligence requires fabulous imagination."

- Ian McEwan

"The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you’re able to let life meet life. If you’re having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down …Creativity exists in the present moment. You can’t find it anywhere else."

- Natalie Goldberg

"I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

- Jeff Bezos

"Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation."

- Mason Cooley

"Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients, recipes, and cooking. It's about harnessing imagination, empowerment, and creativity."

- Guy Fieri

"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."

- Edward de Bono

"Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model."

- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

"Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable."

- William Pollard

"As the world we live in is so unpredictable, the ability to learn and to adapt to change is imperative, alongside creativity, problem-solving, and communication skills."

- Alain Dehaze

"Negativity is the enemy of creativity."

- David Lynch

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

"Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics."

- Victor Pinchuk

"When I'm in the studio, I'm looking for creativity I haven't matched yet, a feeling I haven't felt. It's a high."

- Kendrick Lamar

"Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build."

- Gene Luen Yang

"The interesting thing about overthinking and procrastination is sometimes they can actually evolve into innovation and creativity in the short term. Letting an idea grow in your mind in the short term with a deadline and a plan can actually lead to innovation and creativity."

- Jay Shetty

"Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too."

- Jimmy Buffett

"Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature."

- Eric Hoffer

"An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version."

- Richard Dawkins

"Standardized testing is at cross purposes with many of the most important purposes of public education. It doesn't measure big-picture learning, critical thinking, perseverance, problem solving, creativity or curiosity, yet those are the qualities great teaching brings out in a student."

- Randi Weingarten

"without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language… I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child."

- Claude Debussy

"In writing songs I’ve learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie."

- Bob Dylan

"What is possible in art becomes thinkable in life."

- Brian Eno

"Great artists are people who find a way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."

- Dame Margot Fonteyn

"Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs."

- Joe Biden

"Critical thinking and curiosity are the key to creativity."

- Amala Akkineni

"Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything... whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out."

- Tina Turner

"Art provides an opportunity for kaleidoscopic thinking. Each time we shift the lens of our perceptions, we gain new perspectives — and new opportunities for innovation."

- Linda Naiman

"Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done."

- Austin Kleon

"Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

- Bruce Garrabrandt

"My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

- Ken Robinson

"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."

- Bill Moyers

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change."

- Brené Brown

"Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

- Walt Disney

"Creativity is contagious, pass it on."

- Albert Einstein

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination."

- Jim Jarmusch

"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth."

- Rumi

"Artists are like the Phoenix, they periodically have to self-immolate, burn off an aspect of themselves to give birth to something new. The blank canvas demands you exceed yourself. And most times you fail. This pisses you off so bad you want to quit making art or makes some artists want to quit living. But then you calm down and come back to the work."

- Alex Grey

"Transformative art must express something beyond where you are, it demands that you grow beyond your current self. This is where an artist’s angst and the pain of transformation coincide. You reach toward the true, the good and the beautiful and become a better person through the struggle."

- Alex Grey

"Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is “to fit together” and we all do this every day. Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating – whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day."

- Corita Kent

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age."

- Sophia Loren

"Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds."

- Rollo May

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution."

- Rollo May

"Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks."

- Yo-Yo Ma

"When I am…completely myself, entirely alone…or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these come I know not nor can I force them…Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them gleich alles zusammen."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together, go to the making of a genius. Love, love, love: that is the soul of genius."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Art-making has an alchemical effect on the imagination. It awakens the senses and sharpens insights, teaching us to think in symbols, metaphors, and to de-code complexity, so we can perceive the world in new ways."

- Linda Naiman

"Often what the artist expresses is unconscious, but we can learn to decode the story by collaboratively finding the pieces to the puzzle that create new possibilities for innovation."

- Linda Naiman

"To create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

"Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction."

- Pablo Picasso

"The world speaks to me in colours, my soul answers in music."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"All artists, whether they know it or not create from a place of inner stillness, a place of no mind."

- Eckhart Tolle

"We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"The purpose of truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but that you can become."

- Ken Wilber

"All great transcendental art is not merely symbolic or imaginary: it is a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of our very own being. In the eternal trinity of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, art, while it can be good and true, has always staked out the domain of the Beautiful."

- Ken Wilber

"You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."

- Jack London

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive."

- Pearl S. Buck

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun."

- Pablo Picasso

"Belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation."

- Tom and David Kelley

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

- Pablo Picasso

"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."

- Julia Cameron

"If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

- Vincent van Gogh

"You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

- Ken Robinson

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense."

- Pablo Picasso

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."

- Albert Einstein

"Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen."

- Marshall McLuhan

"Don't think about making art, just get it done."

- Andy Warhol

"The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye."

- Dorothy Parker

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"The creative adult is the child who survived."

- Ursula Leguin

"I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbour a greater life than we know."

- Jean Houston

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"The music of this opera [Madama Butterfly] was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public."

- Puccini

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."

- Paul Klee

"I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

- W. Somerset Maugham

"The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existence."

- Brett Whiteley

"We can actually accelerate the process through meditation, through the ability to find stillness through loving actions, through compassion and sharing, through understanding the nature of the creative process in the universe and having a sense of connection to it."

- Deepak Chopra

"It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception."

- Robert Motherwell

"One of the keys to embracing creativity is recognizing that even though it involves risk, you don’t die."

- David Usher

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The primary benefit of practising any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals or nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations."

- Ben Okri

"Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

- Andy Warhol

"Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control."

- Julia Cameron

"Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach."

- Charles Mingus

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try."

- Dr. Seuss

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"We all know that Art is not the truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and researched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything."

- Pablo Picasso

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

- Oscar Wilde

"Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity"

- Nadine Gordimer

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril."

- Oscar Wilde

"Having no silence in music is like having no black or white in a painting."

- Brian Eno

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

- Albert Einstein

"There is no innovation or creativity without failure. Period."

- Brené Brown

"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people."

- Leo Burnett

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

- Erich Fromm

"Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working."

- Henri Matisse

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It's the response to error that counts."

- Nikki Giovanni

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."

- Toni Morrison

"Creativity means breaking out of established patterns to look at things in a different way."

- Edward de Bono

"Learning never exhausts the mind."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."

- Marcel Duchamp

"Serious design, serious play, is something else. For one thing, it often happens spontaneously, intuitively, accidentally or incidentally."

- Paula Scher

"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

- C.E.M. Joad

"Serious art is born from serious play."

- Julia Cameron

"Doors are for people with no imagination."

- Derek Landy

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

- Lady Gaga

"If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film."

- Andy Warhol

"There is no must in art because art is free."

- Wassily Kandinsky

"The nature of the masterpieces is not to dazzle. Their nature is to persuade, to convince, to enter into us through our pores."

- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."

- Henry van Dyke

"In music the passions enjoy themselves."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

- Hans Hofmann

"I wondered whether music might not be a unique example of what might have been – if the invention of language had not intervened — the means of communication between souls."

- Marcel Proust

"Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John."

- Boris Pasternak

"I do not seek. I find. (Je ne cherche pas; je trouve)"

- Pablo Picasso

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."

- Michelangelo

"There is no genius where there is not simplicity."

- Tolstoy

"Beauty will save the world."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer."

- Robert Graves

"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me."

- Sigmund Freud

"Bad artists always admire each other’s work."

- Oscar Wilde

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

- Pablo Picasso

"Life is short, art is long."

- John Ringling

"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I’ve made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Rejection is an opportunity for your selection."

- Bernard Branson

"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess."

"Creativity is not a competition."

"Create something today even if it sucks."