Theodore Levitt Quotes

Everything becomes creative if the person doing the job is

Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.

When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.

When I was a little girl my parents always told me do everything you want in an artistic way. If you want to draw, make a drawing. Just do it. And if you want to play piano, play piano. It was a very free childhood where everything was possible.

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.

Intrigue is so much more effective. I don't like to be over-prescriptive of an audience. The same with a book or with art - people shouldn't read too much before they explore.

To walk into a studio, for me, is just like walking onto a beach or something.

You can't slot a time and a space and think 'ok now it's time to sit and compose.' It just doesn't work like that for me.

I understand, as an artist as well as a producer, the need for there to be mystery and surprise.

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

The right creative act makes its own laws, and always will do.

What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.

If you're alive, you're a creative person.

We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

The thing about California is that it's kind of a dream, and I started to feel like I was living in a dream. I still feel like that. Because of that I think I've been able to realize a lot of things that were just ideas. When I was living in New York City, it's such a rat race, it's so competitive and everything is so concrete and in your face all the time. If you're like, "I'm gonna be a writer!" Everybody's like, "Yeah, you and all the other assholes on the subway." There isn't a lot of space for the detached, free-floating movement of the imagination.

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

Creativity is something which proceeds from within, out of immeasurable and inexplicable depths, not from without, not from the world's necessity. The very desire to make the creative act understandable, to find a basis for it, is failure to comprehend it. To comprehend the creative act means to recognize that it is inexplicable and without foundation.

A creative person has to believe in the unseen and the untouched.

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process--it is, after all, black magic.