Ava DuVernay Quotes

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.

What drives the creative person is that we see it all.

I don't know whether I have ideas all the time. I think I'm curious about things all the time; I think I'm always curious, and I think I'm always interested in whatever passes by, and I know I tend to think about things, and I tend to talk about things, and sometimes that takes root and gives me something to chase.

I go to somewhere I haven't been and just watch people and colors. That's my inspiration.

Everything's a film idea if this is what you do.I've always been secretly confident that I'd never run out of ideas,because I've never had any. I just live my life, see things theway I do, and I'm just looking for a notion to hang it all on.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one - like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.

I think that everything is part of creativity - the more you create, the more you have ideas, and the more you meet people.

I'm a happy camper when I'm doing both: writing and art every day, along with a dose of reading and adventures into what else is being done by other artists/writers and poets. Like breathing. I've written poems or fictions to go with a painting. The source for the inspiration of the art often eludes me.

If you're a creative person, what inspires you is always changing; it's always shifting.

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

You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.

If you are a creative person, you try to create things that are an extension of yourself.

I come in. I'm going to sketch, I'm going to drape, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Whenever I'm out and I hear something, I'm writing. It's the process of writing it down and then just always creating wherever you go. I never stop creating.

I think, by nature, human beings are curious. And I think that's only amplified as an artist.

I truly find inspiration everywhere. I always tell students, and young people starting out, that the single most important skill, next to listening, is to pay attention. You never know where inspiration will strike.

I think a really great creative person is almost by nature incredibly curious and digging deeply into cultures and technologies and getting all this input and using it to make things better - basically, creating better solutions.

Curiosity is a great weapon for the artist.

I would say any creative person has that: you can't just force a topic. Whether you're a painter, you want to do a cartoon. Anything. Something may come up that's not your style or suited to what you are working on at the moment. So you file it away and hopefully find a place for it.

I get inspired by everything - everything that is around me.

All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!

I'm not going to be like, "I gotta get this idea out of my head." It's like, "OK, here's a clean slate, and I've got all these paints, and all these brushes, and this is what I'm going to do with it." It reveals itself, and you take a step back and say, "What's happening here? Where are we going? What does this mean? Do I need to break it open? Does it need to just be what it is? Should it end now?"

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

Rene Char wrote somewhere, apropos poetry, that there are those who create and those who discover; they are too completely different worlds. Photograph also has two sides to it and thank goodness, I am only intersted in those who discover; I feel a certain solidarity with those who set out in a spirit of discovery; I think there is much more risk invovled in this than in trying to create images; and in the end, reality is more important.