J. J. Abrams Quotes

First have being in your mind. Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality. The genius is he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to be.

What scares me the most is that both the poker bot and Dropbox started out as distractions. That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best.

I don't know why I paint what I paint. I think it comes out - it's kind of my subconscious or something.

Steve Jobs was Galileo in a past life. Discovery was instinctual for him.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

It's impossible to explain creativity. It's like asking a bird, 'How do you fly?' You just do.

My best songs come from a place outside myself.

I'm a thinker and feeler and dreamer and explorer.

Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

I just have a vision of something, and it seems to go a long way. One thought goes a long way.

I never ask myself how I do what I do. After all, how does it rain?

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

The body never lies.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

I don't do my best work while I'm in therapy. I'm too onto myself immediately seeing meanings in things and more likely to censor myself. I'd rather find images I don't understand. That's what generates the work.