Alice Oswald Quotes

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.

I don't care what town you're born in, what city, what country. If you're a child, you are curious about your environment. You're overturning rocks. You're plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you're doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.

I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' She really supported my wanderings, called me Marco Polo.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.

All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.

Your soul is infinitely creative. It is alive and expansive in nature. It is curious and playful, changing with the tides of time.

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

I do think it's important, if you're going to be very creative, to be a seeker.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry

People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' Well, on the first place, I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea, it's too limiting and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity.

I look for stories everywhere.

I have a very creative mind, and I'm always looking for new stuff and new things.

I get inspiration from a lot of things around me - nature, hills, people, and even insects.

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It's your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.

If you want to be creative, go where your questions lead you.

Curiosity is the key to creativity.