Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had a really small role (playing goddess Aphrodite), and I was only working for just over a week with Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson. I'd done a few short films before and thought acting was really creative, but when I worked with those guys, I was just like: "Wow!" They had such fun and freedom. They were trying things and stretching themselves. It was so inspiring that I was like: "I definitely want to do this!"
I think that that phrase from the Bible is one of the best definitions of "creative." When you are creative, you are in the world in the sense that you see what it is and know its problems and possibilities. But you are not of the world in the sense that you are not caught up in external things and are coming from your inner resources to create approaches that are yours alone and have potential to change the world.
Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one - that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process.
If you create something, it really should mean something more than that to you. I had to grow into all of this though, through a learning process. I didn't wake up one day and just say, 'Yeah, that's Jlin, there it is'. That's why I said it took my entire life to make this album and it comes back to having that comfort zone - if you don't have one, the more progress you make and the more creative you become over time.
In the early days I was incredibly creative and productive - I loved the research trips, I loved the creation and finding technical solutions to creative challenges. I didn't need alcohol and the pills for that. What changed was, I was afraid to say no - that little word, N.O. Because I thought it showed weakness. And with more and more success I would just say yes. And keep on taking more work on - which took its toll.
Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself.
The mathematics is the odd one, odd because I'm not sure how to measure its effect. It is so fundamental to my outlook on everything and yet I'm not even sure how. It must be because in my formative years it was everything to me, the single place of beauty in my life, and of breathtaking beauty at that. I still believe that pure mathematics is the most creative thing that humanity does, though I am no longer a part of it.
Cinema is the most challenging art form that you as an artist can create. It's easier to paint a painting because you're very alone. You just have the canvas in front of you and then you do stuff. I'm not saying it's easy to paint, but it's a solitary thing. Whereas movies combine so many different things from pre-production to production, sound design, production designing, leading, organizing, while still being creative.
Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.
[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.
Obviously cheap sentimentality isn't something any good novelist wants to traffic in, but I think it's a problem if you consider it to be the most egregious of all creative sins. I think it's a problem if you consider it the thing to be avoided at all cost. I think it's a problem of you're not willing to risk the consequences of that kind of emotionalism under any circumstances. Then you wind up in the cul-de-sac of irony.
The way you create any outcome in your life is to hold the vision of your deepest desires. At the same time, though, you must honestly and accurately assess your current situation and how it relates to your greater vision. By doing this, you engage tension between what is and what can be. This tension is the primary creative force behind the manifestation of any outcome. It's as natural and powerful as the force of gravity.
What I find in a creative company is while there is a desire to build a management foundation that can feel clear and consistent, the unique product we're in Illumination Entertainment making doesn't always allow for that. So rather than following management strategy that talks about building your structure and then staffing that structure, I tend to build the structure around the strengths of the individual people we have.
Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.
Rhythms, beats, etc., are fundamentally central to my creative drive: my first instrument was the drums, nearly every band I have been involved in or at the helm of, is driven by rhythm, my band is driven entirely by rhythm, machine rhythm, and the purpose of the rock instrumentation is literally to speak the beats, to emulate the rhythms with guitars and bass, with very little articulation, and without being 'progressive'.
Idealism does not represent a superfluous expression of emotion, but in truth it has been, is, and will be, the premise for what we designate as human culture...Without his idealistic attitude all, even the most dazzling faculties of the intellect, would remain mere intellect just like outward appearance without inner value, and never creative force....The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge.
Whenever you were in Michael's Jackson presence, I mean, he's the King of Pop and the most recognized face on the planet second only to Muhammad Ali. I was often surprised to find out that he felt he had as much to learn from you as you did from him. So he treated you accordingly. Everyone was a teacher to him. He had something to learn from everybody. If he appreciated your creative artistry, he was that much more into you.
My teachers believe that the creative producer's job is to service the vision of the director, to stay within schedule and budget, and to get the studio what they need, but you work for the director to get their vision on the screen. That's not how everyone approaches producing, but it is certainly how directors like you to approach producing. How I was brought up is that my job is to help you make the movie you want to make.
Onstage, I enjoy the thrill of live performance - there is no substitute for that rush. On camera I enjoy the crafting of a scene, the widespread creative marksmanship happening all around you for every second of footage. Onstage you can suddenly feel solitary, like it's all on your shoulders, while on camera you feel like there are so many people working with you on every shot. Those are each unique and gratifying challenges.
You can't have the space for prosperity and success when you are obsessed with security. It is not possible to obtain unwavering security - physical, emotional, or economic - by having money. Keep in mind that security, like success, can be defined in many ways. If you focus less on how much your financial assets are worth, and more on what a creative and well-balanced individual you can be, security will take on a new meaning.
In volume and velocity, the new media are making available testimony on a previously unimaginable scale. I'm neither as romantic about the new media landscape, nor cynical. But what's indisputable is the experimental energy that digital forms are unleashing. Among my students and among up-and-coming artists, I find myself startled by the creative responses to the technological, environmental, and political upheavals of our time.
There is something about the light, the heat (physical and perhaps metaphysical), the vibrancy of street life, and the rawness and disjointedness of much of the tropical world that has moved and disturbed me - in places where the indigenous culture is often transformed by an external northern culture (sometimes my own... I suspect that one has a few serious creative obsessions in life. I certainly cannot seem to escape this one.
I am involved in every step of the process [musicmaking]. Whether it is the production or the mixing or the visuals and music videos. I'm involved in every step of the way as far as the creative, directing and merchandise . Just making sure everything that falls in line with my brand is portrayed a certain type of way. It all about quality control and attention to detail, and making sure anything you put your name on is on point.
As far as producing, once we started shooting, I soon realized where the critical decisions about the movies were really being made, and it wasn't on the set. They were being made in the production meetings. That's where producing a movie happens. And that's where I wanted to be. I didn't just want to be a piece, a pawn being played. I wanted to take part in the creative process, and that's how I sort of got introduced to the idea.
My philosophy, one of the biggest enemies of future success is past success, because you become complacent, you become risk averse, and that's one of the things we try to drive here, and this is fundamental to this philosophy, and that's in this component change, and also in value creation. That we need to drive creative destruction, not just incremental innovations, but innovations that will change the whole nature of the business.
One of the first things a relationship therapist learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple does not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.
Creativity itself is a joyous unlatching. The act of creative imagining, inventing, saying differently, crafting a metaphor or image, then crafting another metaphor or image when you go further or when you revise - all these take whatever you think "is" and make clear that other possibilities exist as well. The sense of possibility, the amplitude and freedom that sense of malleability brings - for me, that cannot help but be joyous.
The best thing that happened from that situation when I failed was the fact that I failed and I failed because I was trying to do things that I don't like to do. I like to make movies and I like the creative process. I don't really care about the business end of it. It's not my thing. So I was all of sudden totally immersed in the business end of it and dealing with human resources, lawyers, and accountants, and so on. It wasn't for me.
If P=NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in “creative leaps,” no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it's found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss; everyone who could recognize a good investment strategy would be Warren Buffett.
Once I have the finished sculpture, I’ll put it out on the street or in nature or somewhere where it interacts with the environment. Really it’s kind of the idea of turning the street into a stage and this sort of urban theater has a life of its own. If you have creative drive, and you need to manifest it, then you need some sort of medium to do that through. For me, it worked out with sculpture, and tape just is a means of doing sculpture.
When you're working with movie stars, part of the deal is that, if they have something to say, you'd better listen. You don't have to absolutely listen and not talk, but there is another creative force at work, and to be successful working with movie stars, you have to bring that force to work for you. You have to find something that's comfortable for them, and at the same time, that's in the parameters of what you're trying to do yourself.
As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.
Intellectually I touched God many times as truth and emotionally I touched God as love. I touched God as goodness. I touched God as kindness. It came to me that God is a creative force, a motivating power, an over-all intelligence, an ever-present, all pervading spirit - which binds everything in the universe together and gives life to everything. That brought God close. I could not be where God is not. You are within God. God is within you.
I kind of joke with myself that you shouldn't be able to be a creative producer if you weren't a first AD. Because it is such fantastic training for really understanding what everyone does, and how the movie actually gets made. You have to know if you're the first you're kind of the set general, you're at the director's right hand, you know everything about how a director puts a movie together, you know everything about how a movie gets made.
I wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid.
Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.
We frequently hear how essential it is for someone to think "outside the box," but what actually determines one's facility for doing so? In other words, what skills make someone a creative thinker? Typically, creative thinkers can view issues from multiple perspectives, define problems in several different ways, and anticipate likely obstacles. Someone's aptitude for these skills determines how well he or she will perform as a creative thinker.
It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries--to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain.
The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. . . .
Thanks to the critics and thanks to the Emmys, we got all sorts of great reviews and notices and awards, at the start. Part of it is that it's great fortune to have something to live up to, but as creative people, we all have to just put that aside and go forward, make the best product we can, have as joyous of an experience as we can, and really remember that the spirit of this was to surprise the fans with something that they didn't see coming.
Mr. Russell is a great believer in versatility in all creative work. In any physical work he believes one can work many hours at a time, but in mental, creative work he believes one can do his best only for two hours at a time on any one subject, but he can work another two hours on another subject with equal freshness. He therefore sometimes works two hours a day on each of five different creations, and in that way can live five lives at a time.
People know that both my parents were shrinks so I was sort of raised in an atmosphere where there was that interest in the human mechanism and the human psyche and what makes people tick. And yes, I think I'm particularly creative and adventurous and improvisational and spontaneous in my inner impulses and patterns and deeply curious and appetized in the unfathomably mysterious and delicious phenomena that is the human being and who we really are.
Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.
Another potentiality of our irrepressible juvenility is a capacity to maintain until the onset of senility an active creative interaction with our environment. We persist in exploring, investigating, inventing, discovering. In these respects humans of all eras, in all societies, all ages of life, are more like baby chimps and not at all like the sedate and rigidly conforming adult chimpanzee, who hasn't changed much since she was five or six years old.
I don't know that Brandy [Burre] would ever categorize herself as being trapped, but I felt like I saw her being trapped. When she's cleaning the room and she puts the labels on the toys, that was something that my wife, who's also friends with Brandy, was very adamant that we try to capture. My wife said that showed to her Brandy's creative outlet because she can't be creative in the ways that she used to be or that she maybe wants to be in the future.
Anytime we think the problem is 'out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is 'outside-in' - what's out there has to change before we can change. The proactive approach is to change from the 'inside-out': to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.
There are certain creative jobs where you know you are the person on the line, and there are few guarantees that you're going to be able to crank out hits every year. For the most part, it's a roller coaster. You look at Fox, you look at NBC, you look at ABC, and they've been up and down over the years and in every different position. So if you are somebody who is not afraid of risk and you love the creative process, it's great. Why would you not do it?
The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
The toughest parts of the shooting schedule for me are the days between working, when you've nothing to do but wait. There is only so much time you can spend on a script before it becomes so rehearsed that your performance becomes rigid and immovable on the day of, so one has to occupy one's time in some fashion. For me, those interim days are usually spent exercising, exploring, learning to cook something edible, and working on my own creative endeavors.
Skateboarding has always been and continues to be creative and rebellious. Art and design are an extremely important part of skateboard culture, even if it's not recognized by the more elitist or pretentious members of the art world. Skateboarding itself requires creative adaptation to the streets and obstacles. My background as a skateboarder helped me to be a better street artist because I was already conditioned to look at the terrain opportunistically.