Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

One of the things meditation gives you is creativity because creativity really comes from the subconscious brain - intuition, imagination - so it's not like you can go there and say, I'm going to go be creative now. Maybe you can, but the real way you get creativity is, you know, you're taking a hot shower and great ideas come to you from the subconscious. Essentially, meditation opens a pipeline between the conscious and the subconscious.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from.

Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

It is all about being open and paying attention to the music in your head. I think most people have original music playing in their heads from time to time.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I very seldom compose anything in my head which later finds its way into text, except character names sometimes - I'm often very much inspired by things that I misunderstand.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

I believe sometimes we aren't always in charge of everything that we do creatively. We submit to things as we're going on our own journey.

You can't rush inspiration.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

A lot of my songs are inspired by a muse of some sort, whether she's real or not.

I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper'. The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.

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

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.