Quotes about Creativity

An artist is first an amateur.

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius.

If you can speak what you will never hear,—if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly.

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.

This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.

Genius is full of trash.

Yes, in fact, it's hard to believe this, but it was almost 18 years ago when I first got the idea.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, 'You're Gaga'.