Maggie Smith Quotes

I mean, I like to be creative because it challenges me to try to be better than I am as a person and I hope that in some way that that makes someone else think and feel something about themselves that then has given them the opportunity to grow.

My father's music has always inspired me in many ways... especially to be better at what I do.

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.

My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had faith in my ambition, and I think that made all the difference.

I think imagination is a crazy thing, and that's what makes the world go around.

When you think outside of what you know, that brings out the best in you.

I think one of the reasons that we are able to actually keep making music that we want to make, and that we're inspired by, is because there is a certain amount of instability constantly, and I think that mirrors the instability of any given life.

The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.

He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

I want to talk with people who care about things that matter that will make a life changing difference. True or true? Yes or yes? I never let my subject get in the way of what I want to talk about. When your self-worth goes up, your net worth goes up with it. In imagination, there's no limitation. Don't think it, ink it.

I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

Whether you are in the West, the East, the North, or the South, we should all feel pressured to attempt more, find new ways of outwitting ourselves, in our writing and thinking.

As you get older, your mind gets a little more set. And it needs the poking and prodding and breaking through of stereotypes that I think young people provide.

That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.

We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. Several new science papers suggest that getting away is an essential habit of effective thinking. When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we'd previously suppressed. We start thinking about obscure possibilitiebsthat never would have occurred to us if we'd stayed home.

The power of work, and the power of creativity can be your salvation.

Life and love inspire me. I think reinventing yourself is vital to your survival as an artist and a human being. I know it’s cliché to say about me at this point, but it’s true. My curiosity definitely is the driving force in my life and career. When you stop learning, engaging and growing, you’re dead.

There is always room in your life for thinking bigger, pushing limits and imagining the impossible.

I pay attention to what's going on around me. I'm always looking for new energy, new talent, new voices. When you do that I think it's easier to come up with fresh ideas. It's not that my career has been based on surprising people, but it's been about challenging myself - to constantly do new things that are going to broaden my own mind and in the process, hopefully, connect with other people.

The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas. I have a heavy travel schedule so being in a new environment always gives me another perspective to see things from.

My parents were always encouraging of us being creative however we wanted to be. People say, "You didn't get pressured into having to be a director?" But it's hard to be around my dad and not be curious about filmmaking, because he thinks it's the ultimate medium.

Moment to moment, I'm very much just feeling and trying to synthesize what I'm taking in so it can come out musically. I'll continue to do that. I'm also someone who really likes to push themselves into new situations with new people and try to learn from them. I will be very happy to continue doing that, if people let me.

Think of things not as they are, but as they might be. Don't merely dream- but create.