Quotes about Creativity

Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong.

And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That's our job!" Toni Morrison

I refused to explain, or even acknowledge, the "problem" as anything other than an artistic one.

If there's a book you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn't limit my imagination; it expands it," Toni Morrison, who turns eighty-eight today

There's a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death." —Toni Morrison

In her way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.