Creative Inhibition Quotes

I don't know if I've got the capacity for all of the creativity that I want to put out there, which is annoying and frustrating - it's kinda like torture.

'Places to Go' is something that I would never normally write because I would usually be worried with what people would think about me.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.

I think one of the things that writers and creative artists generally have to deal with is the censors that we have in our heads, the voices that we have that say you better not tell that and don't tell that, and people will think you're not a good girl, and your grandmother's going to be mad at you and all of those things.

I think one thing that's important to maintain is a sense of fear, always doubting yourself... a good dose of insecurity helps your work in some ways.

I think everyone is born creative but it can be suppressed by fear.

Writers talk about the agony of writing; I talk about the agony of not writing.

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.

When one gets time duration, one becomes very restricted, and hence, creativity suffers.

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head.

The smallest quantity of alcohol scares away novel ideas.

I'm not one for sitting around listening to my own music, because I tend to cringe and think that I could have done better. I also suffer from red light syndrome quite a lot. I tend to narrow my thinking when the red light goes on to record. Instead of just relaxing and playing and emoting, I think of time being wasted so I won't take a chance on something. Consequently, when I hear it back, I think, "Why the hell did I play it so safe on that piece of music when I could have really opened up?" Well, it's because of not wanting to make a mistake.

I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.

Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time.

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.

I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.

Only you know what you're trying to accomplish. Any time you're thinking about whether someone's going to like this or not like this, you're f**ked. You've made the decision based in fear. Fear is the cancer to creativity.

I think people place limitations on each other and on ourselves. There is a great fear of expressing ourselves, of making creativity happen.

I think early on I avoided singing because it was so personal and I didn't know how to sit in that intimacy. I wrote songs when I was little and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

Analysis kills spontaneity.

Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.