“Two things come to mind that are euphoric for me. One is the universal euphoric: sex, that period of time when you are at an absolute peak of sexual feeling. The other is when I create something that moves me. When I am the audience to my own creation and I’m moved. If it were a drug and I could buy it, I’d spend all my money on it.”
Paul Simon, via Sunbeams (Page 50)
Quotes about Creating
13 Intriguing Quotes from Daily Rituals and How Great Creators—Create
Excerpt: How do great creators make time, find inspiration, and produce incredible bodies of work? Read these quotes from Daily Rituals to find out…
Read More »13 Intriguing Quotes from Daily Rituals and How Great Creators—Create
“There’s no one way—there’s too much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time—not steal it—and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.”
Bernard Malamud, via Daily Rituals (Page 233)
“Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule—in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk—exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night—six hours, seven, maybe even the recommended eight—so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.”
Stephen King, via Daily Rituals (Page 224)
“I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.”
John Updike, via Daily Rituals (Page 195) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“Some pianists say they are the slaves of their instrument. If I am its slave, all I can say is—I have a very kind master.”
Sergey Rachmaninoff, Daily Rituals (Page 179)
“My life has been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public.”
Louis Armstrong, via Daily Rituals (Page 114) (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.”
Henry Miller, via Daily Rituals (Page 53) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“A modern stoic knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”
W. H. Auden, via Daily Rituals (Page 3)
Daily Rituals [Book]
Book Overview: How is a novel written? A masterpiece painted? A symphony composed? Benjamin Franklin took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec pained in brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts—he believed alcohol was essential to his creative process. Here are the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived, who, whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstands or boxing, made time and got to work.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- 13 Intriguing Quotes from Daily Rituals and How Great Creators—Create
- Gerhard Richter Quote on Ideas and How They Won’t Come to You—You Have To Find Them (Beyond the Quote Day 413)
- Henry Miller Quote on Not Draining The Reservoir and Finishing Before You’re Done (Beyond the Quote Day 418)
- Haruki Murakami Quote on Routine and How It’s A Form Of Mesmerism (Beyond the Quote Day 420)
- John Updike Quote on Writing and How Waiting For Inspiration Can Backfire (Beyond the Quote Day 421)
- Willa Cather Quote on Writing and Making It An Adventure Rather Than A Chore (Beyond the Quote Day 423)
“We don’t tolerate typos in commercial products, and the market has the same feeling about design that’s lazy or out of place. Graphic design represents an emotional commitment to the work. Long before we read the words or understand the images, we see the layout. Kerning and color and weight and form arrive in our brains before we have decided what the words on the page actually mean. You wouldn’t wear a clown suit to a job interview, and yet people dress up their ideas in clown suits all the time.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“If you never copy best practices, you’ll have to repeat all the mistakes yourself. If you only copy best practices, you’ll always be one step behind the leaders.”
James Clear, Blog
C. Day Lewis Quote on Writing and How We Write To Understand; Not To Share What We Already Know
“I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it… We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
C. Day Lewis, The Poetic Image, via Sunbeams (Page 15)
Beyond the Quote (385/365)
It starts out as a feeling. An inquisition. A hunch. A curiosity. A reoccurring thought. An observation. An idea. A single line of text.
It proceeds as an exploration into the unknown. A navigating of unclear roads. A charting of unexplored territory. An unraveling of knotted up mental yarn. A sorting through of an unorganized desk. As trains of thought.
Read More »C. Day Lewis Quote on Writing and How We Write To Understand; Not To Share What We Already Know“I’m often asked where my melodies and lyrics come from. I may never fully comprehend how a song sprouts from nothingness into existence, and truthfully, I’m not tempted to decode the mystery. I hope to be constantly surprised, in amazement of how the tiny seed of a possible chord or lyric miraculously springs to life. That unexplainable process, that alchemy, is part of what separates art from logic and reason. I don’t create from a set of rules or formulas. I tap into my true feelings and experiences and allow them to guide me.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 60)
“The magic in any art is not only in its technique but in its authenticity. Truth in its rawest form is what resonates most powerfully.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 39)
“Some people hesitate to share an idea because they’re worried it will be stolen. In general, these people are afraid of success, not failure. An idea unspoken is a safe one, which not only can’t be stolen, but it can’t be tested, criticized, improved or used in the real world.”
Seth Godin, Blog
