Chogyam Trungpa Quotes

I've never not been pleased with one of my albums. I figure because it's spoken word, there will be people who relate to it, and people who don't, so I don't worry about any of that. I've been doing it for over twenty years. I've always written because it was something I had to do, never for the glory.

The way I work is not the way that you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you, and if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity I will be moved.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.

If life is a blank canvas and all people are artists, the big challenge we all face may be expressed this way: Will we ultimately produce something approaching a masterpiece, an acceptable but not particularly memorable work of art, or a creation that wouldn't even be purchased at a yard sale?

There's nothing better than finishing something and looking at it. Whether it be a script or a movie, it's this complete little thing that now exists and is hopefully immortal.

So I don't think being an artist you can ever satisfy - the moment you do get satisfied is the moment you're done, really. I'm actually starting to bug out now, because it's not enough. I get joy and pleasure in the movies out there in the world that people are seeing, but for me, it's about making it. That's why I do it, is to make it, to deal with my life.

You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen. When you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.

What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.

Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.

When art is really great, it's really powerful, can really do something to you, make you feel more alive and make you feel more connected to something. If you don't feel like that when you do it, and you just make a movie to make money, that would be pretty boring to me. I just wouldn't do it. That would be like sitting in an office, which I don't want to do.

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

I've always had a really great time being in movies and writing music when I get home. The more creative I am, the more it feeds into other creative aspects of my life.

I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

My experience working with lots of creative people is that they don't lose their artistic edge when they lose a fierce level of anguish. They just create from a different place.

We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.

I feel like success to me is about feeling like I have done something in storytelling, where I've gotten close to articulating something intangible that I'm feeling, and I think I get closer every time, but I don't know that I've done that yet.

Words are the instruments you play to the song of your ideas, you're just playing covers.

The struggle is part of the creative process, and it's very enjoyable to have the struggle. Without the struggle, there would be no joy in creativity. The one thing that is not enjoyable is if you get attached to the outcome. And if you're constantly looking for approval and you are not immune to criticism, then you are in trouble, and you will continue to be struggling and never find the creative impulse.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

I love to kind of people watch; that's part of what I do as an actor and creative person and sort of step back and watch others.

The creative phase of an idea coincides with the period during which it insists, cantankerously, on its boundaries, on what makes it different; but an idea becomes false and impotent when it seeks reconciliation, at cut-rate prices, with other ideas.

To be creative you actually have to do something.