Andre Breton Quotes

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential.

Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.

My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me.

Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.

Ideas are the old-age of art. Artists have to keep young; they must not think too much - thought is death, while art is life. Such was Emile's viewpoint.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

Creativity doesn't follow titles. It just comes from where it comes from.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

To be an artist means not to compute or count.

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow.

There's no such thing as a cautious creative.

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes.

To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

I stray away from formulaic, the formatted.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

Always be different; don't follow the rules. Don't do what anyone tells you. Don't use the same sounds as people; don't use the same drums as people.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

There are no rules in art.