Idea Retention Quotes

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

Make sure to immediately write down any impressions you receive. Intuitive impressions are often subtle and therefore 'evaporate' very quickly, so make sure to capture them in writing as soon as possible. Recent research in neuroscience indicates that an intuitive insight - or any new idea - not captured within 37 seconds is likely never to be recalled again. In 7 minutes, it's gone forever. As my buddy Mark Victor Hansen likes to say, 'As soon as you think it, ink it!'

Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.

His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it.

If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?

Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory, in the dense network of your neurons. Most slow hunches pass in and out of our memory too quickly, precisely because they possess a certain murkiness. You get a feeling that there's an interesting avenue to explore, a problem that might lead you to a solution, but then you get distracted by more pressing matters and the hunch disappears. So part of the secret of hunch cultivation is simple: write everything down.

Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.

As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it - otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.

I've never discussed my writing with others much, but I don't believe it can do any harm. I don't think that there's any risk that ideas or materials will evaporate.

Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.

I worry all the time that I'm going to run out of ideas, you know? I always tell my mom my fashion ideas, because I know she'll remember them.

I'm trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It's like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.

The bad ideas kind of just drop out of the mix. You forget about them. The good ones stick around.

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.

I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, often a very long time, before I write them down; meanwhile my memory is so faithful that I am sure never to forget, not even in years, a theme that has once occurred to me.

At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.

A book is full of ideas. You just live with what you read for so much longer. A lot of the times, nowadays, with a movie or TV show, it's like, 'Oh, it's entertainment!' And you never think about it again.

If I'm home and I come up with something, I'll try to record it, but a lot of the time I'll forget to. A lot of things go off into space and never come back 'cause I just don't remember them.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.

He could charm an audience an hour on a stretch without ever getting rid of an idea.

I do throw out a lot of ideas, and I forget completely about them.