A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. Bu...
We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative. Imaginative people fidget with ideas, including the idea of a relationship. If they're wordsmiths like us, they fidget a lot in words.
As more and more work is done by machines, people can spend more time on other activities. Not just leisure and amusements, but also on the deeper satisfactions that come from invention and exploration, from creativity and building, and from love, fr...
The field of scientific abstraction encompasses independent kingdoms of ideas and of experiments and within these, rulers whose fame outlasts the centuries. But they are not the only kings in science. He also is a king who guides the spirit of his co...
The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The journey, The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up...
Still, I wonder if more women artists, musicians and writers aren't household names because we don't have enough faith in our own pursuits to give ourselves the time we desperately need to be transformed by a creative vision. Maybe that glass ceiling...
Poetry lets me pour out my various emotions even the suppressed ones we didn't know exist inside us' til the moment you start jotting down what you're feeling. It's more than an escape into the unknown, a refuge for your creativity and sometimes wild...
You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, ...
My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating m...
Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will. In creative work no amount of force or mechanical management can guarantee beauty. Suddenly, without expecting it, beauty is there. Yet ul...
According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world--and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, th...
One of the things that's been nice about my career is that I've been able to do so many different things, and variety keeps your creative soul fulfilled. I'm constantly looking to find new things to do. It's just project to project for me. You never ...
...those thoroughly incorporated within the inexorable logic of the market and its demands find that there is little time and space in which to explore emancipatory potentialities outside what is marketed as 'creative' adventure, leisure, and spectac...
Someday, i dream we will medically address mental illness in a way that helps people WITHOUT completely crippling them, creatively or robbing them of their precious sensitivity. No one wants to live life feeling like they underwent a chemical lobotom...
In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potent...
During my 20’s and 30’s at some point I started to think, “I have to give it up and I have to grow up.” But the truth is that I can never give it up and that’s another thing that I always tell people, especially young people: don’t even b...
In the land of the rejected, the field is flattened, open to much oppurtunity. Here flourish the weeds and nonstandard quality alike. No one aspires, because there is no pinnacle to reach — just be better than whoever is next to you. It is basic, f...
Something about the turbulence of adolescence makes you want to do something creative...I thought as I got older I would stop writing about it, but I find adolescence, and popular depictions of it, very interesting. I like to see where my own life in...
Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound . 'As she walked up the alley, her polyester workout pants sounded like windshield wipers swishing back and...
Where visual artists are concerned, the Baroque sculptor and architect Bernini and the painter and sculptor Picasso were clearly adept at both experiential and instrumental attending, says Tellegen, as is the modern architect Frank Gehry. Choosing a ...
There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am de...