351 Quotes About Creative-process

She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or canvas before starting her next masterpiece. How satisfying it was to mess around in paint gear, without having to worry about spills, starch or frills, that was the life!

When you're an artist, it's because there's something inside you that you can't keep from spilling out. Maybe it comes in the form of sentences, or a grand jete, or stroke of a paintbrush. The end result can be a million different things. But the seed, it's always the same. It's the emotion there isn't a word for. The feeling that's too big for your body. To show someone your soul, you have to bleed. People who are comfortable, people who are content, they don't create art.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.

You can't make a fan of everyone. Stay true to your story, characters, music, art or whatever it is you do and fuck everyone else who doesn't like it. Life isn't perfect.

You are always learning. At the end of each day, you know something you didn't know at the beginning. We're all learning on the job. This is true even when the thing you've learned is that you know less than you thought.

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 revising."[The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest, May/June 2009)]

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer's block.

We do not need to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of our creativity – it can be a transformative mode of healing, rather than a drawn-out self-destruction.