David Mitchell Quotes

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

The profession of being a creative thinker is not so obvious.

You're always moving and thinking about a whole bunch of things. But those traits work well for me in studios and in meetings about creative ideas. If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes. I figured out a way of working with it.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.

I just get silly inside my head and I start to think about something and in my head I start twisting it around, contorting it and envisioning it in different ways.

Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.

Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.

To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.

I've always thought abstractly - through theme and variations rather than narrative.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.

My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way.

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.

People that are able to think in terms of concepts and offer us valuable forms of art are very exciting to me.

My mind jumbles things, reassembles them, and plays with words without even being asked.

Ideas come from everywhere - they come from what you see and hear and imagine.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

Collecting the dots. Then connecting them. And then sharing the connections with those around you. This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing.

I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.

Creativity and lateral thinking have exactly the same basis as humour.

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.

Creativity is just connecting things.