Creative Stimulation Quotes

I love New York. It's given me so much as a designer. When I moved here, I wanted to tap into the glamour of the city immediately. More than anywhere else, New York offers itself up - you arrive and get a rush in a flash. It's dazzling. Everywhere you look, there is decoration, from a pair of jewel-encrusted shoes in the window in Bergdorf Goodman to the Chrysler Building. And New York is incredibly democratic. Everyone is packed into this tiny space. You are confronted with all manner of people, and I love that.

When I was on that boat, I realized the only way I would feel creatively challenged was if I totally changed everything about my environment and put myself in a storm, in a sense.

Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.

It's weird: I don't really know where I pull my inspiration from. I think it's N.E.R.D.

Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.

I've talked to a lot of artists - painters, writers, musicians - many of whom have had great ideas on trains. The only explanation I have is all that stuff is coming at you while you're relaxed, so somehow it kicks you into hyperspace in terms of brain function.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

I like entertainment. I'm an innate admirer of good entertainment. I'll listen to MTV, I'll listen to Mozart, I'll listen to anything that has a good element in it.

Because of work, I travel a lot, and because of that, I can experience different cultures and see and talk to a lot of different people, so I get inspired by that a lot.

A creative space is an important thing. There are so many studios that feel like doctor's offices in Nashville. I couldn't write there.

I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for.

The majority of my life is 'Guardians,' but being able to clean my brain a little bit by doing something totally different like 'Belko' was incredibly helpful to the creative process.

As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that's an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.

I can only be inspired if I'm working with people that I really respect.

I have musical ADD, so I like to switch things up.

In my own life, I share my home with works by artists like Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Jackie Windsor and so many others, whose creativity is clear and fresh and compelling; the works break through the usual, and they inspire creativity; they inspire responses and understanding.

We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it's not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being.

So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.

Sometimes I think it's easier to play someone who's very, very different from yourself. Besides, I wouldn't want to play people who are just like me; that would get awfully boring very fast!

I love to be on location. I love to be in other parts of the world. I love to be where I'm reminded about real, you know, emotions. I love to touch things and design things, and I think that, for the actor, it certainly - it certainly helps their performance.

I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.