Maxine Hong Kingston Quotes

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

I believe sometimes we aren't always in charge of everything that we do creatively. We submit to things as we're going on our own journey.

Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.

I don't fight creativity. I don't fight against not being creative. If I'm not being creative, I'm not forcing it.

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!

When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about how or why or when the next project will come into being beyond simply acknowledging that it is inevitable that it will be very soon.

Being at the genesis of the creative process is definitely something I want to keep doing. It's just such a great buzz.

It's hard to regulate the speed at which you can achieve something creative and emotional.

Writing is challenging work because it's so easy to get consumed with how it's going, what's going to happen to it, who's going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.