Quotes about Creativity

Pee-wee Herman yelling through a vocoder

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

William Faulkner was once asked how he went about writing a book. His answer: "It's like building a chicken coop in a high wind. You grab any board or shingle flying by or loose on the ground and nail it down fast." Like becoming a pastor.

Joel Henderson was once asked how he had managed to write all those books. He replied that he had never written a book. All he did was write one page a day. With his limited energy and restricted imagination, a page at a time was all that he could manage. But when a year was up he had a 365-page book.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, one of our great modern Isaian prophets who had extensive experience with violence in two world wars, wrote, "The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships."

Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

It was important for me to remind people that there's no formula... there's no boundary to R&B music.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

There's so many ways you can play one chord progression that the repetition isn't ever exactly the same.

I don't think I represent some new category. I think I do represent kind of a freethinker.

Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.