Create dangerously: 11 quotes to celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Day
To be a writer, of fiction or nonfiction, one needs an immense amount of creativity. Coming up with new worlds, evoking places in the reader’s imagination, conjuring up characters, crafting a beautiful sentence, sculpting a compelling story – all of it boils down to creativity.
But creativity is about so much more than that, too. To me, creativity is about joy, it’s about self-actualizing, it’s about choosing to face life with hope rather than despair. It’s through creativity that we create the life we most desire for ourselves, survive trauma and hardships, and, ultimately, become ourselves.
To celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Day, we’ve compiled eleven of our favourite quotes from writers, artists, and thinkers on creativity and creation.
“Every time you make a piece of art, you locate yourself, your precise position on the longitude and latitude of your experience. You learn who you are and what you believe.” – Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and The Right to Write
“I am an artist of living, my work of art is my life.” – D. T. Suzuki, Japanese Buddhist scholar
“Create, create, create. Your art, your heart, your peace, your world, your perspective, your truth, your joy, your own story, your own life.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic
“Create dangerously, for people who live dangerously.” – Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m dying
“Create… for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.” – Ernest Barbaric
“Why should we all use our creative power….? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.” – Brenda Ueland, author of If you want to write
“Just make art. Just make an artful life. Let the other chips fall where they may.” – Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Wayand The Right to Write
“But man does not create… he discovers.” – Antoni Gaudi
‘In a world in which so many people seem to be in a race to destroy as much as they can, any act of creation is precious. Whatever you’re creating, on whatever scale – […] know that it matters. You matter.” – Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat
“The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your reach.” – Rebecca Solnit
“Following your creative desires is an empowering way to love yourself. Ignoring your creative desires is a disempowering way to deny yourself.” – Yumi Sakugawa
Aimee-Claire Smith lives in Cape Town, where she is studying English Literature and working on her first novel. She likes coffee and cats. You can follow her on twitter or Instagram: @aiimeeclaiire