Creativity Quotes

I’m not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he’s not in the mood and doesn’t feel the juice. I don’t think discipline equals creativity.

Don’t let a grade decide your self-worth. Personally, in my opinion, someone should gauge their self-worth on what they’ve accomplished that makes them feel good… not in the hedonist aspect, but in the sense of personal accomplishment, as far as what they’ve accomplished for them, as far as their self-development and creativity is concerned.

One of my central philosophies is to be creatively driven so I have to be extraordinarily creative in the way I get things done and I have to be really flexible. Striving for the best creativity can be a really moving target if you’re trying to budget anything because if you come up with a better idea for something and it’s going to make the movie stronger then you have to do it. And that’s what I do. The difficulty is that you have to use more judgement as a producer then you might in other places. I have to make unbelievably great creative decisions.

Being singer is different than being an actor, where you call up sources from your own experience that you can apply to whatever Shakespeare drama you’re in. But an actor is pretending to be somebody, a singer isn’t. And that’s the difference. Singers today have to sing songs where there’s very little emotion involved. That and the fact that they have to sing hit records from years gone by doesn’t leave a lot of room for any kind of intelligent creativity.