Photo taken at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia
Two Moments
Looking back at our various achievements and progress as a species, the significance of creativity in our lives couldn’t be more obvious. There are far too many motives to create, and for some artists, making things for the sake of doing so is reason enough.
Whether we do it for the quality of our lifestyles, mindsets, relationships, or more, the point is that we recognize the value it brings in some way or another. Nevertheless, what I’ve come to understand over the years is that in the pursuit of anything you’re striving toward, it’s vital to pay attention to something vastly important.
Beyond the goal, outcome, or skills you desire, this component must be considered, which can only be found by looking inward. This element that I’m referring to is your intention, the “why” behind the actions you take that come from the state of being aligned with who you are at this exact moment.
I believe that understanding how this works ties the meaning of your aims to greater depth and purpose, enabling you to align your “why” with the “what” and “how.” Our intentions have an enormous impact on whatever we create, and when we approach it with clarity and integrity, all sorts of things happen, especially when our efforts are offered as a service to something larger than ourselves.
This is not unlike the idea of two moments of creation, first as a mental blueprint and second as a physical reality, which is essential to think about in light of the conceptual age. Here are 18 quotes I’ve found from artists unpacking their own philosophy on the subject below.
“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.’”
― Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them — with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them…”
― Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings
“True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse.’”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations
“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”
― Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”
― Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
“The professor leaned forward. ‘But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.’ Her lovely face turned fierce. ‘Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.’”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
“That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
“If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist
“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
“Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element
“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
“Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Pass the Torch
One of the dangers of engaging in what you love is the chance of getting caught up in some external metric or reward to define your idea of success. But knowing our intentions helps us combat this by providing the foundation we need to keep us honest.
It’s a mental exercise that allows us to strengthen our intrinsic motivation, which shapes the core energy, meaning, and long-term trajectory of our work. Hopefully, in our efforts to respect the process, we can enliven those awaiting their turn, fulfilling our service to set the tone so that we can one day pass the torch.
Photo taken at the Kapalıçarşı Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey
