Noen ganger trenger vi bare å høre det fra andre. Ord som minner oss på hva kreativitet egentlig handler om: å prøve, ta sjanser og bare gjøre det. Se også Big Magic.

Roald Dahl

Britisk forfatter kjent for Charlie og sjokoladefabrikken og Matilda.

If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

Susan Sontag

Amerikansk forfatter, kritiker og filosof.

Do stuff, be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Ernest Hemingway

Amerikansk forfatter og Nobelprisvinner.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

Julia Cameron

Amerikansk forfatter, kjent for The Artist's Way.

Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness ... No matter what your age or life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

Sylvia Plath

Amerikansk poet og forfatter.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Joan Didion

Amerikansk forfatter og essayist.

I'm not telling you to make the world better ... I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.

John Cleese

Britisk komiker og skuespiller, medlem av Monty Python.

Creativity is not the possession of some special talent. It's about the willingness to play... Creativity doesn't have to be taught. It has to be liberated.

Kurt Vonnegut

Amerikansk forfatter.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow – whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

Chuck Close

Amerikansk maler kjent for fotorealistiske portretter.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

Mary Oliver

Amerikansk poet og Pulitzerprisvinner.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

Ira Glass

Amerikansk radiojournalist og programleder for This American Life.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through.

Wisława Szymborska

Polsk poet og Nobelprisvinner.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.

Pablo Picasso

Spansk maler og billedhugger.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Østerriksk-tysk poet, kjent for Briefe an einen jungen Dichter.

To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquility, as if eternity lay before them. Patience is all!