Bill Bryson Quotes

That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.

They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies…the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you. When you're stumped, go to your notes like a wizard to his spellbook. Mash those thoughts together. Extend them in every direction until they meet.

What makes me different as a scientist is that I'm kind of imaginative. The ideas just happen.

The hardest thing is the idea. Ideas come from somewhere but as far as we know they come from nowhere.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

You can't rush inspiration.

It's sort of a mystery where ideas come from.

We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.

Common sense is a vastly overrated virtue. I myself prefer the spark of genius.

I usually just have ideas when I have them.

Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.

I think that genius comes not just from having great mental processing power. It comes from being able to, as Steve Jobs' ad said, think different.

"Where do you get your ideas?" That's the one question I'm genuinely sick of being asked, and also genuinely fascinated by. What fascinates me is not that people ask the question, but what kind of answer are they really looking for? Because if I tell them the truth, which is "I make them up," they seem very disappointed. They want to know about the trek I do once a year to the mountain.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watchtower on the lookout for incidents that may excite the imagination.

You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.

...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.

You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense-the result of judgment and experience-which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up.

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page; you cannot fathom your mind. There is a well of thought which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

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.

Ideas result from the collision of metaphors inside the head.

The person with just one good idea is a thousand times better off than the person with no good ideas.

There is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap.