Brenda Ueland Quotes

Usually, a number of events will be going on around me to start me on a book. What I mean is, I will have read a poem or seen a picture that is lingering in my mind.

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

High energy creates more energy, more energy, more energy. It kicks off synapses, I guess. It opens up your brain and you think of one thing after another thing, after another. You can really open yourself up comedically, which is fun.

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

A lot of people think inspiration means magic. But really, inspiration means to put life into something.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I get ideas from everywhere: movies, books, movies, nature - it comes into my brain, it sits there for a while, and it starts coming back out.

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

A lot of times, I get what I want to write while I'm driving. I love listening to music in the car, perhaps because of my dad - that's all he does.

I can only write songs when somebody gives me some water to swim in. Otherwise, I'm a fish on the beach.

I just like to stay creative. Anything that can keep my mind going.

Ask creative people where they get their ideas, and they will roll their eyes. It's the most common question, but it's also a bad one because the answer is inevitably disappointing. From the inside, creativity seems like an arduous task, often involving plebeian, imperfect choices, driven less by inspiration than by deadline.

As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new and keep it exciting.

Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it.

My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me.

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.

You can't really do anything creative without a source of inspiration.

Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas, and one of the easiest ways to encourage that fertile froth is to keep your mind engaged with your project. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.

I do sculpting sometimes when I have the time, and the first thing I sculpted was a bust of [Albert] Einstein. It still sits on my table and still inspires me. He was a person who triggered my imagination and my ideas.

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock which I feel and which makes me escape from reality... I need a point of departure, even if it's only a speck of dust or a flash of light.