Nikolai Berdyaev Quotes

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

The creative processes are so mysterious.

There can be no technique or formula for creativity.

Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.

Creativity doesn't follow titles. It just comes from where it comes from.

To be an artist means not to compute or count.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.

A lot of people probably get the idea that I'm this extremely calculated kind of guy, and in a lot of ways, I am. But when it comes to music or artistic expression, I'm very uncalculated and do things very spontaneous. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't want to do this anymore. I can't just play the same thing over and over; it would drive me crazy.

Creative instinct is personal.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Embrace the unpredictable and unexpected. It is the path to the infinitely creative in you.

We are asking a really fundamental question whether thought can ever be creative. If thought is not the ground of creation then what is creation? Is love the only factor that is creative?

There is no end in creativity. Hence, to strive towards an end result is a fool's errand. Set goals, make music and paint pictures, but know that the crux of your happiness balances delicately on the wings of the act of creativity itself. Not at the finish line.

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

Ideas are the old-age of art. Artists have to keep young; they must not think too much - thought is death, while art is life. Such was Emile's viewpoint.

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already – the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.

If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.

Creativity is a continual surprise.

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

Surprise is where creativity comes in.