Ruth B Quotes

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel.

If I'm home and I come up with something, I'll try to record it, but a lot of the time I'll forget to. A lot of things go off into space and never come back 'cause I just don't remember them.

I've always got a notepad on or a voice recorder recording ideas.

They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies…the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you. When you're stumped, go to your notes like a wizard to his spellbook. Mash those thoughts together. Extend them in every direction until they meet.

When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff.

A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

For me, the beauty of the blank page, or empty screen,staring up at nine thirty after two cups of coffee and a deep breath remains unique. The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know - apart from the more obvious sensual ones - is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols. Making an idea into an emotion.

At the very beginning, it's a desire and that's not the same thing at all, because when you have the desire to do something, all the work you can do is a positive thing. It's not something that you calculate. An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way. The immersion, it's classical, I watched a lot of movies.

I absolutely adore the alchemy of a bit of an idea.

Everything starts with writing.

People seem to think that they can't come up with ideas, and they're wrong. They can and they do, but they just think of it as daydreaming, or wasting time. Kids get told not to make things up, and in my case, nobody told me long enough, or it just didn't stick.

I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.

When you're shopping, too, you feel like you're designing as you're shopping. You're like, 'I love this, but I wish it was shorter or I wish it was purple. I wish it was a different fabric,' you know. It starts there, but then when you have to start from scratch, it really comes with an idea first, and then... you want to tweak and then you come up with something else and you want to add to it or change. It's fun. It's like an ocean - you can do whatever.

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

Any art that you are playing based on effort, loses something. I think that most of the time it should be something that happens, and you are inspired, and you just feel and follow your instincts. The best chiseled sculptures happen when the sculptor looks at the stone and says "I saw this sculpture in the stone, and I had to get it out." It's not contrived.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

Knowledge is the stuff from which new ideas are made. Thus, the real key to being creative lies in what you do with your knowledge.