Quotes about Creativity

Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.

All work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes—which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification -which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.

Its the critic's job to interpret the artist, even to the artist himself.

The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others. That is not the same thing as a productive or creative purpose.

There are only individual minds and individual achievements—and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

Have you always liked being Howard Roark?" Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.

I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.

Ultimately it was rap that got my head in the right place, two songs especially: Jay-Z's "My 1st Song" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.