E. M. Forster Quotes

the unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth.

It has been said that great art is the night thought of man. It may emerge without warning from the soundless depths of the unconscious, just as supernovas may blaze up suddenly in the farther reaches of void space.

I write in my sleep. I don't know how, but I'll work on a song, go to sleep and it's finished when I wake up.

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.

The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind.

When creative people do their best work, they're hardly ever in charge, they're just sort of rolling along with their eyes shut yelling wheee.

Human nature provides the lyrics, and we novelists just compose the music.

Art is a game only if you playat it, a mirror that reflects from the inside out.

The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life - without knowing.

The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...

In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning-point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening.

Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.

Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds.

Painting, for me, when it really 'happens,' is as miraculous as any natural phenomenon - as say, a lettuce leaf. By 'happens,' I mean the painting in which the inner aspect of man and his outer aspects interlock.

The writer can't stop her unconscious from showing up, that's certain.

Creativity is a religion. When you get into it, you will find your life becomes more spiritual.

Creativity is a spiritual issue.

I don't decide. My secret self decides. I just go with my subconscious. If it wants to do a poem, I do a poem, and if it wants to do a play, I do a play. So I'm not in charge, I'm not in control.