Creative Decline Quotes

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He [Capablanca] wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is the easiest.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.

I suppose I could do 'The Reassembler' at 80. But it would be a terrible cliche.

Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.

Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade. Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade: Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace, And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place.

I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.

I believe this passionately: that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.

Original movies of any size are an endangered species.

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared.

It's certainly not a shock to find that the industry has no imagination. I think people don't know what it is I do. Because half the time you're talking to people who are in their 20s, and I've been doing this for over 25 years.

I think reality TV now needs a big kick up the a - to get creative and be meaningful, I think. Otherwise, people are becoming famous for having no talent, based on pure exposure. That's the grating part.

All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniusized by grownups.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die. But when a business ceases to be creative, when it believes it has reached perfection and needs to do nothing but produce no improvement, no development, it is done

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

Inevitably any series that goes on too long will reach a point where it starts struggling for ideas, so I've always been really aware of getting out while the going's good.

There will always be some kid who's the new Kurt Cobain writing great lyrics and singing from his soul. The problem is they're not marketing that anymore or putting it out there.

Everyone can draw when they're five. Most of us lose the ability.

Well, I think that as a country, we've drifted away from appreciating the importance of imagination.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.