Joy Harjo Quotes

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

I think when you're being creative, you still attach it to reality somehow.

I love the creative process and being able to build something out of nothing.

To me, it's like the difference between a pen and a paintbrush. 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. Nobody really does. It sort of arrives when it wants to.

God has given us an imagination, and our imagination is really the principle tool from which all creativity and artistry comes from.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

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

Your creativity before it gets formed into words and songs is the actual substance. No one else can see it, right? Unless you give it the shape of a song or a painting or whatever.

Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what's already there.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

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.

I don't think there's really any difference between art - or writing, or music - and magic. And I particularly draw the link between magic and writing. I think that they are profoundly connected.

I have no imagination; I just steal from life and change the color. Then it's a comic book.

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream or whatever.

But there's nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Every single thing you see on-screen came out of somebody's creativity. It doesn't exist. Nature didn't deliver it to us. Everything had to be dreamed.