Shaun Tan Quotes

I enjoy creating new ideas, working on new creative projects.

Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.

For me, the creative process is this giant patchwork of information.

I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer.

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random.

Well, what I try to do is throw as much mud on the wall as I possibly can and just see what sticks, what shines as quirky or more interesting that the others, and I try to cling onto that one, somehow join a link from there to there.

Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.

An almost indispensable skill for any creative person is the ability to pose the right questions. Creative people identify promising, exciting, and, most important, accessible routes to progress - and eventually formulate the questions correctly.

Most intuitive ideas have to be clarified, so there is a trial and error process.

One rule of invention: before you can invent it, you have to imagine it.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.

Sometimes I do that quite a lot, go back and forth a lot between ideas. Try things out.

I can't solve a puzzle for the life of me - my brain doesn't work that way. But I can take a very simple idea and extrapolate from it and spend time with it and pull things out of it.

I'll stop when I run out of ideas.

Don't be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don't follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it's enough.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

Sometimes even hearing a bad idea is a great way to get to a good idea.

When you're in the editing process, you try different things and you get creative ideas.

Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.

The profession of being a creative thinker is not so obvious.

I have multiple ideas per day, all the time. The vast majority of these are completely idiotic. Usually, I just sit on the idea for several months. And if I have not decided that it's idiotic, then it's... might be a good idea.

Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build.

I like to start with the ordinary, and then nudge it, and then think, 'What happens next, what happens next?'