Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture.

The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.

First thought is best in Art, second in other matters.

It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters.

Design the life you want to live.

Every artist of importance creates his own world, with its own laws - creates and shapes it in his own shape and image, and no one else's. This is why it is difficult to fit the artist into a world that has already been created, a seven-day, fixed and solidified world: he will inevitably slip out of the set of laws and paragraphs, he will be a heretic.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

When faced with a decision, many people say they are waiting for God. But I understand, in most cases, God is waiting for me.

Creativity is just connecting things.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

Art like life, should be free, since both are experimental.

So with imagination, ingenuity and audacity, explore, discover, change the world. And have fun while you're at it. Always take time out to love and to live. You're going to be busy, but never forget family and friends.

Your creativity is waiting for you like a dancing partner.

Love , creativity, and opportunity is in the air. Take it in and do your thing.

Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

The engineers of the future will be poets.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

What do I do to live? What do I do to be vital? The answer is always creativity; the answer is always art.

If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

We are the makers of our own state and...individuals who realize the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action.

Don't wait around for someone else to tell your story. Do it yourself by whatever means necessary.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.