You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred...

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as...

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

She pours sugar on her life and drinks the artist’s marrow in the bone of her glass and she lives.

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start.”(Interview, The...

For any creative thought to be contagious, it must first be worthy of a sneeze.

She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or...

Write. Don’t talk about writing. Don’t tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don’t give me a bunch of ‘somedays’. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it...

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then...

I make them up,’ I tell them. ‘Out of my head.

[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an ‘idealistic’...

Every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason...

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits...

I just needed time alone with my own thoughtsGot treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault

Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.

Creativity isn’t a switch that’s flicked on or off; it’s a way of seeing, engaging and responding to the world around you.

Creativity is as much about order against freedom; control versus rebellion; organisation against disorder as it is about straightforward imagination.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy’s trenches, and if, once in this crater,...

Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they described what it was like to be members of Prince’s band. They’d sit down, and Prince...

[T]he success of every novel — if it’s a novel of action — depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, “What are my big scenes?” and then get...

You can’t force creatives into a box. If you try, they’ll no longer be creative. And no one will want your box.

The show must go on, and so must The Book.

My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter.

The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody...

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

We can’t turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we...

A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering...

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Never forget,Each day that we have together is a precious gift.In the web of daily living, we are creating character.Let’s take the time to create memories, listen and observe.Time flees, and it does not return.If...

I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t...

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.

Every creature is a co-creator

You know you possess the soul of an artist when, each time you sit down to create, the whole universe lays itself at your feet.

You have enough to create what you want.

The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part,...

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer’s block.

You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche.

Regarding the creative: never assume you’re the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you’re masterful.

I don’t know exactly where ideas come from, but when I’m working well ideas just appear. I’ve heard other people say similar things – so it’s one of the ways I know there’s help and...

It is not possible to be original by trying to be original – those who attempt this in the arts will be merely avant-garde. Originality is the product of an impulse to intense and overwhelming...

For those who can do it and who keep their nerve, writing for a living still beats most real, grown-up jobs hands down.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.”[A Conversation with Alice Munro, BookBrowse, 1998]

But Abraham, you mean I’m supposed to make stuff up !?!?- You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.

Here is a lesson in creative writing.First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.And I realize some of you may be...

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for...

I write to believe in goodness.

In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that...