The quote library
Frankisms
Short truths, collected over a lifetime of writing and teaching. Read a few, or lose an afternoon.
- Collected
- 1,993
“Brainstorm obstacles that will prevent the character from relief within the timeframe. Relieve the tension at the last possible moment. — James Scott Bell”
creativity
“Concentration does not mean squeezing your brain tight, but rather relaxing it and bypassing the editor. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“Creating is often like a perpetual state of being in love. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Creating is the place where the human spirit shines its brightest light. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Creative thinking is just another name for finding new idea-combinations. — Rudolph Flesch”
creativity
“Creativity is the great yes. We all learn to say no too much and too soon. — Marshall J. Cook”
creativity
“Creators often do not have all the answers. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Critics who complain the modern world has lost the art of conversation must never talk to children. — Rudolph Flesch”
creativity
“Distorting reality is detrimental to the creative process. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. — Ralph Charell”
creativity
“Don’t accept what has been done before as the only way to do anything. — Bill Veeck”
creativity
“Don’t copy the competition. — Thomas Umstattd”
creativity
“Don’t just hope for ideas. Hunt them down! — Dwight V. Swain”
creativity
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. — Pablo Picasso”
philosophy
“Every life will have some bit of wasteland, some empty lot where daydreams come to be. Learn to spend time there. — Linda McCullough Moore”
creativity
“Faith is building on what you know is here, so you can reach what you know is there. — Cullen Hightower”
creativity
“Good ideas come from having lots of ideas. — Marshall J. Cook”
creativity
“Have you ever been able to just stay with one thought for very long? Another one arises. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end. — Harry Emerson Fosdick”
creativity
“I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. — Thomas Edison”
creativity
“I found if I go to bed with a question on my mind, all I have to do is concentrate on the question before I go to sleep and I virtually always have the answer in the morning. — Christopher Langan, tested with an IQ of 195”
creativity
“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. — Leonardo da Vinci”
creativity
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. — Woodrow Wilson”
creativity
“I shut my eyes in order to see. — Paul Gauguin”
creativity
“Ideas aren’t much use unless you write them down. — Marjorie Holmes”
creativity
“Ideas don’t flag themselves to get our attention. — Chip Heath”
creativity
“If the creative process is anything, it is a continual learning process in which mistakes help guide you toward greater and greater competence. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source. — Saint Ambrose (c. 340397), Letter 17”
creativity
“If you can write a question, you can answer it. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“If you want to know about a tree, go to the tree. — Basho, the great seventeenth-century Haiku master”
creativity
“If you’ve lived ten years, you have enough writing material for your whole life. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein, On Science”
creativity
“Imagination is the true magic carpet. — Norman Vincent Peale”
creativity
“In a sense, your creativity is like your blood. Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent. — Julia Cameron”
creativity
“In the creative process, it is never a good idea to lose touch with reality. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“In the creative process, love is generative rather than simply responsive. — Robert Fritz”
creativity
“It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box. — Timothy Ferriss”
creativity
“It’s good to plant a seed. Nothing grows without one. — Natalie Goldberg”
creativity
“Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues. — Phillips Brooks (18351893), Literature and Life”
creativity
“Limited funds are a blessing, not a curse. Nothing encourages creative thinking in quite the same way. — H. Jackson Brown Jr”
creativity