Oliver Sacks Quotes

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.

People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

I think if you're really good at what you do, you can see outside the box.

I don't think my work is so strange. It's just a matter of having the discipline to go the whole way with an idea, to stretch it as far as it can go.

Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

A creative moment is part of a longer creative process which, in turn, is part of a creative life.

If you're alive, you're a creative person.

I think it's a big part of being a creative person.

Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular - with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

While most people in the arts think they have to be constantly looking forward to be edgy and creative....the real secret of creativity is to go back and remember.

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.

Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has yet come into being.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

I think to be creative you have to resist taking the easy path.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.

Where there is creativity, there is hope.

To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.