Creative Self-Discovery Quotes

You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

I think anyone who lays a long trail of creative work over the years can't help but look back and wonder, 'What was I thinking?'

A first building is like a first novel, it is always autobiographical.

As you write plays, you discover what you believe. And until you know what you believe, you can't write a play.

An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.

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

Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.

"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: Sustained success comes only when you take what's unique about you and figure out how to make it useful!"

You don't have to make something in order to retain your identity as an artist or a writer or a creative person. A lot of people think they have to be producing in order to maintain that identity.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.

Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.