Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
- Arthur SchopenhauerCreativity
Creativity is usually discussed as inspiration arriving from outside, and least often as what it mostly is: work done on days when it does not want to be done. The tension is old. Antiquity had muses, Romanticism had genius, and the twentieth century had the working habits of writers who rose at five because otherwise nothing happened at all.
The best quotes on making things are therefore fairly unromantic. They talk about repetition, about discarding, about the first solution rarely being the right one. Leonardo filled notebooks long before he finished anything; Edison built patents on a run of failures. If you are looking for confirmation that inspiration arrives unbidden, you will not find much of it here — which is probably good news.
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
- RumiEither write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
- Benjamin FranklinImagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.
- George Bernard ShawYou must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
- Friedrich NietzscheBe alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.
- Nikola TeslaImagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert EinsteinBeauty will save the world.
- Fyodor DostoevskyExcellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
- Booker T. WashingtonAt the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
- PlatoWhat is done in love is done well.
- Vincent van GoghGenius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- Thomas EdisonA bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
- Chinese ProverbTalent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheArt is never finished, only abandoned.
- Leonardo da VinciA thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- John KeatsEvery artist was first an amateur.
- Ralph Waldo EmersonWithout music, life would be a mistake.
- Friedrich NietzscheMusic expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
- Victor Hugo