Words of Wisdom

“Creativity means going against what you’ve learned.”
—Anthony Bourdain

“The artist should never try to be popular. Rather the public should be more artistic.”—Oscar Wilde

“Any healthy man can go without food for two days—but not without poetry.”—Charles Baudelaire

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”—Émile Zola

“To create one’s own world, in any of the arts, takes courage.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
—Jack London

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
—Maya Angelou

“You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you’ve written against the various middlemen—editors, agents and publishers—whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not as high.”—William Zinsser

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldy cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”—Ray Bradbury