57 Quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be ‘free,’ but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves.

The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.

The professionalism of technique and flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power, hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators.

Play cannot be defined, because in play all definitions slither, dance, combine, break apart, and recombine.

Structure ignites spontaneity.

As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business.

Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions; therefore, it is sometimes painful.

An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution.

There is not ultimate breakthrough; what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint, because it is the journey into the soul.