William Lipscomb Quotes

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play.

It's impossible to feel the creative juices flowing if you're always worried about the end result. I think really, really good work comes out of people being quite open, not stressed, really exploring, trying to be imaginative, without worrying too much about the end result.

Any one thing can get in the way of you and your brain being comfortable and being inspired. It's the difference between a really big song and a song that never existed.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward

Sleeping is the height of genius

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

I don't fight creativity. I don't fight against not being creative. If I'm not being creative, I'm not forcing it.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Trying to force creativity is never good.

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

I don't believe in writer's block.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

I just find my creativity manifesting a bunch of different ways.