Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.

I generally write the songs accidentally. They generally come out of nowhere.

To me, the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is, inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

I don't know why I paint what I paint. I think it comes out - it's kind of my subconscious or something.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I like to do things sort of intuitively, I think.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It's coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don't even know where they are.

Many times, my intuition wins. I trust my intuition a lot. A lot.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

Sometimes when I write songs, I don't know what they're about, and it just suddenly comes to me.

I've always felt that if I examine myself too much, I'll find out what I know and don't know, and I'll burst the bubble. I've gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I'd rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

Sometimes, I knew generally what I was going to do, but I've never written anything down. Call it a sixth sense: the lines just come.

I never get the feeling that I've decided rationally, cold-bloodedly to write a story. On the contrary, certain events or people, sometimes dreams or readings, impose themselves suddenly and demand attention.

The history of science and culture is filled with stories of how many of the greatest scientific and artistic discoveries occurred while the creator was not thinking about what he was working on, not consciously anyway - the daydreaming mode solved the problem for him, and the answer appeared suddenly as a stroke of insight.

I work instinctively. If I like something, I do it.

I think your subconscious knows far more than your conscious, so I trust it.

I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

When your mind is functioning correctly, there is an out streaming of light from within in the form of inspiration, hunches, leadings, and intuitive flashes - trust this process of inspiration. “In the twinkling of an eye” ideas and plans may flow into your mind.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.