Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

When you have a creative mind it doesn't stop going.

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

I'm always looking for the creative spark. Always.

To generate creative ideas, it's important to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, they have to be connected to something familiar.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.

It's not enough to tell people to be creative; they need to know how, and what to create.

I would consider myself an inventor at heart, or reinventor.

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

We have to think big. We have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people imagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they're very limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine much more broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.

We are all innovators, we all like to use our imagination, which is our greatest tool.

One rule of invention: before you can invent it, you have to imagine it.

When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.

I apply the term 'creativity' broadly... it's problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that's where creativity comes in.

I like trying to be creative.

Geniuses don't have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.

Creativity requires novelty. Imagination is all about counterfactuals and untested possibilities that don't yet exist.

All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas.

Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.

I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer.

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

Most organizations do not value imagination, do not encourage it, do not reward it. In many cases, they don't even think about it. But if you're not thinking about imagination, I guarantee you're not going to have meaningful innovation.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.