Art quotes about creativity

Aki Sasamoto

Artist
"I have to make objects in such an O.C.D. way. When everything is lined up, it starts to have its own logic and I have no control over it. That’s another way for me to be dominated by objects. I like that when objects start to have its own life - like you cannot control and all of a sudden I realize that is very much what I’m experiencing in my life."
- Art21, An artist walks into a Bar, 2019 - About her creative process

 Amanda Palmer - Tim Ferriss

Singer, songwriter

TM: “...Quite a few artists in different disciplines, who are afraid if they take their pain away they will not be able to create.”
AP: “Yes that is such a tyrannical and destructive myth.”

- Amanda Palmer on Creativity, Pain, and Art | The Tim Ferriss Show, 2019

Beau Lotto

Professor of Neuroscience
“The heart of creativity is the ability to see differently. If you can’t see differently then there is no way you’re gonna be able to do anything differently. Which means perception is fundamental to creativity. In fact, perception is fundamental on everything that the brain does.”
- Beau Lotto - Is creativity actually creative? 2017

Billy Joel

Singer
"The only original thing we do is screw up. You can be taught to do any craft, any art, the way it’s been done for all of history. You can repeat what all the masters did before you. You can be taught how to play all the great compositions.. perfectly. But it’s been done. I have the feeling the only thing we each can do that’s original is screw up in our own unique way."

🎥  Billy Joel - Q&A: Innovation Vs Being Commercial? Hobart & William, 1996

David Dedeine

Creative director "A plague Tale: Innocence

"Sometimes, the psychology of humans is — when you know you have no time, and you know you need to converge, there is this magic moment that’s hard to explain. There is an alchemy that makes everything happen and suddenly you find the right solution. It comes from pressure, so we need deadlines. At some point, you realize that you can do better and want to do crunch."
- PlayStation LifeStyle, 2019

Elizabeth Gilbert

"Somehow we've completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish. And the question that I want to ask everybody here today is are you guys all cool with that idea? Are you comfortable with that? Because you look at it even from an inch away and, you know - I'm not at all comfortable with that assumption. I think it's odious."
- Ted, Your elusive creative genius, 2009

Ethan Hawke

"So, if you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself. And to express yourself, you have to know yourself. It's actually super easy. You just have to follow your love. There is no path. There's no path till you walk it, and you have to be willing to play the fool."
🎥  Ethan Hawke | Give yourself permission to be creative | Ted, 2020

Eugene Soh

“Prove it right!” It seems counterintuitive, like if someone says something bad about you, you prove it right. What does that mean? So let me explain what this quote means and what I got from it: so if someone calls you fat, and you don't like it, you can do what Meghan Trainor did. She knows she is fat, so she made a song about her being fat, and now no one laughs at her."
- “The dude who became an accidental artist” Tedx, 2015

Heather Dale

“You have to understand yourself, you have to figure out what really defines you as a person, and once you find those like-minded individuals, it's about pulling them together into a new community, and so I call it finding your tribe. I had found yet another part of my tribe like-minded individuals who understood the things that meant something to me that led to another burst of creativity”
- How to find a tribe that loves your art, TedX, 2013

John Patrick Weiss

Writer, artist
"You can try and fuel all your passions and creative projects, but doing so will slow the development of your primary pursuit."
- John Patrick Weiss "How To Avoid The Renaissance Man Trap", 2018

John Roelofs

Framer
“If minimalism requires you to do a simple thing very well and I think simplicity is deceiving. The more simple something becomes the harder it is to make it perfect."
- For artists like John Roelofs, practical realities come before passion, Medium 2018

Lawrence Lessig

Founder of Creative Commons

"No one can do to Disney Inc. what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm. An intellectual Commons at cultural Commons where people could freely take and build. It was a royalty-free zone. It is a culture that you didn't need the permission of someone else to take and build upon. That was the character of creativity at the birth of the last century."
- Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, 2007 TED 2007

Maisie Williams

Actress
"The idea of collaboration is so important within the creative industry. And as an artist, it is really easy to get quite closed off, want to protect your art, keep it to yourself, keep it locked down and not let people in. But to be successful and to grow as an artist you really have to open up. You have to let people in. You have to get that constructive criticism, that feedback, the second opinion which ultimately help you as an artist being a more open-minded person."
- Launch and promotion of her creator-centric app, Daisie, in 2018

Yo-yo Ma

"Since so many people are saying, so I assume they are right, I am not sure, is that what we need in our 21st-century workforce are people who have incredible collaborative skills, who have incredible flexible ways of thinking, great imagination, and who can be innovative. Now if we have the whole population of citizens who can do those things, we all gonna have an economic crisis."
- Aspen Ideas Festival in 2013 - Photo credit: Judith Jockel