Quotes on Creativity

[Daniel E.]

The Myth of Creative Inspiration

Don’t discount the power of a schedule.

getpocket.com

The work of top creatives isn’t dependent upon motivation or creative inspiration, but rather it follows a consistent pattern and routine. It's the mastering of daily habits that leads to success, not some mythical spark of creative inspiration.

~ James Clear

 

[Daniel E.]

When it comes to ideas, most people overestimate the risk of piracy, and underestimate the price of obscurity.

—Mike Trap

 

[Daniel E.]

Many of the “gurus” of popular culture get to where they are because they appear to be transformationally gifted when in fact they have little that is both new and useful to offer.

~ Robert J. Sternberg

 

[Daniel E.]

"People think I'm disciplined. It's not discipline. It's devotion. There is a great difference."

~ Luciano Pavarotti

 

[Daniel E.]

“If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.” —Eckhart Tolle

 

[Daniel E.]

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

– George Lois

 

[Daniel E.]

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Vonnegut faced a lot of obstacles in his life and career, including a lifelong struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts (more common in writers and poets and other creative individuals than most people realize) and divorce from his wife of several years when she became a born-again Christian which put the two at odds over his atheism.

Beyond his marriage, he was deeply affected when his son Mark suffered a mental breakdown in 1972, which exacerbated Vonnegut's chronic depression, and led him to take Ritalin. When he stopped taking the drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly.

Kurt Vonnegut - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't know anything about what type of therapy he was given but the choice of Ritalin as medication may have been unfortunate.

 

[Daniel E.]

A previous psychiatrist in Florida let me try a stimulant (Provigil) at my request to see if it would help with anything. After the first dose and feeling palpitations, I lost all interest in anything more stimulating than coffee.

 

[Daniel E.]

“If you are a gifted person, it doesn’t mean that you gained something. It means you have something to give back.”

~ Jung

 

[Daniel E.]

"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward."

"We have a paradox. Going into the deepest aspects of inner space connects you with something that is the most vital for the outer realm."

~ Joseph Campbell

 

[Daniel E.]

― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

 

[Daniel E.]

“We can make the most of our short experience of life, actually, and to live it fully, to exist as a separate, creative individual, we have to differentiate in those ways.”

~ Robert Firestone, Ph.D.

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

A Survey of 20,000 Creatives Suggests Brainstorming is a Giant Waste of Time

"Send people off with the time and space to think properly and the quality of their ideas will probably improve."

getpocket.com

"While working together is essential to bring an idea to life, it’s not that good for shaping ideas in the first place."

~ Rob Alderson

 

[Daniel E.]

"The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety."

"What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul."

~ Deepak Chopra

 

[Daniel E.]

Sarcasm Spurs Creative Thinking

Although snarky comments can cause conflict, a little verbal irony also stimulates new ideas

www.scientificamerican.com

“It is the critical spirit that creates.”

~ Oscar Wilde

 

[Daniel E.]

How Motherhood Affects Creativity

Cultural messages tell women that making art and having children are incompatible pursuits. But science suggests that women may become more creative after having kids.

www.theatlantic.com

A mother’s brain requires cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility. “This helps us adapt to new environments. Flexibility and thinking outside of the box—isn’t that what creativity is?”

 

[Daniel E.]

Why does experiencing ‘flow’ feel so good? A communication scientist explains

Research shows that people with more flow in their lives had a higher sense of well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists are beginning to explore what happens in the brain during flow.

theconversation.com

Researchers think the connection between flow and well-being has something to do with three things: suppressing brain activation in structures associated with thinking about ourselves, dampening activation in structures associated with negative thoughts, and increasing activation in reward-processing regions.