quotes and passages on creativity

You were placed on this earth
to create, not to compete.

Robert Anthony

Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends
to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.

unattributed

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs,
with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

J. Krishnamurti

Creativeness often consists of merely
turning up what is already there.

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Creativity is a central source of
meaning in our lives. . . most of
the things that are interesting,
important, and human are the
results of creativity . . . when we
are involved in it, we feel that we
are living more fully than
during the rest of life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative,
you're keeping the child inside alive.

John Cassavetes

Many times we will get more ideas and
better ideas in two hours of creative
loafing than in eight hours at a desk.

Wilferd A. Peterson

If you are seeking creative
ideas, go out walking. Angels
whisper to us when we go for walks.

Raymond Inman

The refusal to be creative is an act of self-will and is counter
to our true nature. When we are open to our creativity, we are
opening to God: good, orderly direction. As we pursue our creative
fulfillment, all elements of our life move toward harmony. As we
strengthen our creativity, we strengthen our connection to the
Creator within. Artists love other artists. Our relationship to
God is co-creative, artist to artist. It is God's will for us
to live in creative abundance.

Julia Cameron

HOME - contents - abundance - acceptance - achievement - action - adversity - advertising - aging - ambition - anger - anticipation
apathy - appreciation - arrogance - attitude - authenticity - awakening - awareness - awe - balance - beauty - being yourself
beliefs - body - brooding - busyness - celebration - challenges - change - character - children - choices - Christianity
coincidence - commitment - common sense - community - comparison - compassion - complaining - compliments - compromise
confidence - conformity - conscience - contentment - control - courage - covetousness - creativity - criticism - cruelty - death
desire - determination - discouragement - diversity - doubt - dreams - earth - education - ego - encouragement - enlightenment
enthusiasm - envy - eternity - experience - failure - faith - family - fault-finding - fear - finances - flowers - forgiveness - freedom
friendship - fun - gardening - generosity - gentleness - giving - goals - God - goodness - grace - gratitude - greed - grief - growing up
guilt - happiness - hatred - healing - health - helpfulness - home - honesty - hope - hospitality - humility - ideals -idleness - idolatry
ignorance - imagination - impatience - individuality - inspiration - integrity - introspection - intuition - jealousy - joy - judgment - kindness
knowledge - laughter - laziness - leadership - learning - letting go - life - listening - loneliness - love - lying - marriage - materialism - meanness
mindfulness - miracles - mistakes - mistrust - mystery - nature - negative attitude - now - oneness - open-mindedness - opportunity - optimism
pain - patience - peace - perfectionism - perseverance - perspective - pessimism - play - positive thoughts - possessions - potential - prayer
prejudice - pride - principle - purpose - relationships - religion - resentment - respect - responsibility - rest - revenge - risk - role models - sadness
safety - self - self-love - self-pity - self-respect - serving others - shame - silence - simplicity - solitude - spirit - stress - stupidity - success
thoughts - time - today - trust - truth - unfulfilled dreams - values - vanity - war - weight issues - wisdom - wonder - work - worship - youth
spring - summer - fall - winter - worry - Christmas - Thanksgiving - New Year - America - zen sayings - Native American wisdom
The Law of Attraction - obstacles to living life fully - e-zine archives - quotations contents - our most recent e-zine - articles

I decided to start anew—to strip away what I had been taught, to accept
as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was
no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything
about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own,
unknown—no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and
decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted
to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

Georgia O’Keeffe

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Henri Matisse

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man.
I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him
that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said,
“You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well,
but somehow you are different.” “Ah,” he said, “I don’t think you
should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers.”

Andrew Wyeth

Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner
vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting
what he or she thinks should be there, not quite pulling
it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again,
each time finding out what this painting isn’t, until he or
she finally finds out what it is. And when you finally
do find out what one corner of your vision is, you’re off and running.

Anne Lamott

I learned. . . that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic,
energetic, striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly
and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it
a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

Brenda Ueland

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. . . . Each time we fit things together we are creating--whether
it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.

Corita Kent and Jan Steward

Creation, after all, is only play.	Your expression in all its forms is the dance of creation.
Stephen C. Paul

Creativity comes from the spiritual realm, the collective consciousness.
And the mind is in a different realm than the molecules of the brain.
The brain is a receiver, not a source.

Candace Pert

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.
The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong,
but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Agnes de Mille

Creativity requires the courage
to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative
is the place where no one else has ever been.

Alan Alda

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

Mary Lou Cook

I am much more interested in being creative than in being busy. Creating
feels good. It fills me, restores me, nourishes me and energizes me. There
are many ways to be creative. You can take scrap wood and build your cats
a series of shelves, boxes, and mazes. You can write, paint, shop, or talk
to people. When you are creating, you will feel the sense of creation in your
body, and time will not exist. If you have forgotten what a sense of creation is,
go look at a baby. When we see a baby, we see potential. Remember that
we are all former babies and we all have the potential within us.
Go to the nearest mirror and reflect on it.

Bernie Siegel

Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity
is our gift back to God.

Julia Cameron

Creativity contributes to our sense of aliveness and our playfulness. . . .
One art teacher, Adriana Diaz, defines creations as "places where
caring and daring come together." They open our eyes to nature
and the body and give us fresh appreciation for both ritual and recreation.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Articles and book excerpts on creativity:

Allowing the Soul to Breathe      Tammy Renea Rizer-Averyt
Site to Be Developed      Bernie Siegel
Morning Pages      Asoka Selvarajah
It's Never Too Late to Learn      Michael C. Futa

Creativity of all kinds focuses your mind, engages your imagination,
and feeds your soul. Being creative can also facilitate understanding
and encourage healing. Creativity is mindfulness in motion--intuitive,
artistic motion. Creative moments and activities give you a boost
and help you feel energized and good about yourself.

Sue Patton Thoele

It is easy to consider the essential role of creativity in bringing joy
and meaning to the human condition--without creativity we have
no art, no literature, no science, no innovation, no problem solving,
no progress. It is, perhaps, less obvious that creativity has an equally
essential role in schools. The processes of creativity parallel those
of learning. Recent calls for authentic activities, teaching for understanding,
and real world problem solving all require engaging students
with content in flexible and innovative ways.

Alane Jordan Starko

I am the one and only me.
I may not think of myself as a creative person, but I know that I have unique talents and skills to share.
For instance, art may appear on a canvas, or it may appear in a meal prepared with love. Some hands sculpt clay or play a musical instrument, and some gently hold the hand of a child. Wisdom can be found in books, but it can also be found in quiet conversation across the kitchen table.
I am creative in my own unique way. As I more fully express who I am, I bless others, and blessings flow back to me. I am creative, productive, and open to divine inspiration. I give my gifts to the world.

Unattributed (Daily Word)

We are co-creators with God, not puppets on a string waiting for something to happen.

Leo Booth

Creative power has to filter through our beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and habits.
The more negative and constricted our beliefs and patterns are, the more they
block the creative energy. Most people hope that by ignoring negativity, it will
go away, but the reverse is actually true. Through recognizing, acknowledging,
and experiencing it, the blocked energy can be released. You are then free
to replace it with positive beliefs and attitudes.

Shakti Gawain

Two great Kindle books from our site! First, the daily meditations from the first year are gathered together in a single volume at just $3.99 for the entire year, and second, almost 4,000 of our most motivating and inspiring quotations are gathered in one volume for just 99 cents-- you can have thousands of quotations that took over a decade to pull together, all on your own PC, Mac, or Kindle, to take with you wherever you go, to read whenever you feel the need for inspiring thoughts.

You were being spiritual without even knowing it. Creating art of any kind is an act that involves the part of our souls we usually don't tap into on a daily basis. We rely on our emotions, our intuition and our heart to lead us to the finished product. We use art to express our innermost selves, to bring us closer to our sense of the divine.

The trouble is, most of us haven't done anything creative since we cut out paper snowflakes in third grade. "I was never any good at it," we say. Or, "My stuff will never hang on a museum wall, so what's the point?" It's so easy to neglect the artist in us because most of day-to-day living is so uncreative. We don't need art to raise the kids or attend a meeting or pay the bills, so we assume that it's nonessential for all but the few people lucky enough to be able to make a living at it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. If anything, we need to express ourselves through art more now as adults than we did as children. For one thing, it's a terrific release for stress-- when you're totally engrossed in capturing a still life or shaping a clay bowl, the rest of the world automatically shuts itself out.

Shana Aborn