42 Quotes on Creativity To Break You out of Writer’s Block

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You know it when the creative block happens.

You’re plugging along in your writing project, working away on your book, a cool blog, or even your website copy, and suddenly the words start to feel so… blah.

Perhaps it’s even feeling uninspired and kind of blah. You might call it a creative funk. Whatever you call it, you just wish it would end, and you can get back to work.

After 20+ years of writing in corporate settings, 10+ years of consistent blogging, 3 self-published books (a fourth draft in the works), and coaching entrepreneurs on the same, I’ve seen writer’s block in all its shapes and know how to get through it.

Sometimes, all you need to get going with your creativity when you're eyeballs deep in a creative funk is to read a simple phrase, a line in a great book, or hear something when you're out and about that gets you back into your groove and into creation mode again.

And the thing is, you never know when inspiration will happen.

This is a roundup of the top quotes on creativity that I use to keep myself and my clients creating. I also polled the generous and super big-brained souls inside my writing membership for their faves.

Here are 42 inspiring quotes on creativity to help get you through writer’s block:

1. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” ― Albert Einstein

2. “The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” ― Julia Cameron

3. "The creative adult is the child who survived." ― Ursula Leguin

4. "Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones." ―Bruce Garrabrandt.

5. "You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have." ― Maya Angelou

6. “One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now.” ― Paulo Coelho

7. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” ― Henry Ford

8. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” ― Napoleon Hill

9. “Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.” - Austin Kleon ― Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

10. “There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.” ― Mark Twain

11. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

12. “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” ― Jack Kerouac

13. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ― Vincent Van Gogh

14. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” ― Leo Burnett

15. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London

16. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath

17. “Create something today even if it sucks.” ― Unknown

18. “You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”― Oscar Wilde

19. “Creativity is not a competition.” ― Unknown

20. “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.” ― Dr. Seuss

21. “Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” ― Charles Mingus

22. “Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.” ― Donatella Versace

23. “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.” ― Steve Jobs

24. ”Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

25. “Don’t think about making art, just get it done.  Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” ― Andy Warhol

26. “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”  ― Walt Disney

27. “We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what’s left is who we truly are.” ― Arianna Huffington

28. “Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.” ― Salvador Dali

29. “It’s better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.” ― Herman Melville

30. “No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time, it’s just that others are behind the times.” ― Martha Graham

31. “I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” ― Rita Mae Brown

32. “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” ― Albert Einstein

33. “Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.” ― Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life

34. “Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.” ― Julia Cameron

35. “Serious art is born from serious play.” ― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

36. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

37. “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka

38. “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” – Jodi Picoult

39. “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” – Aristotle

40. “Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.” - Julia Cameron

41. “Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” - W.H. Auden

42. “Even today, I aim to get at least one piece of writing done for myself every day. … Putting my work first before meetings before anything else.” Me! Jacqueline Fisch, Intuitive Writing Coach & Author

While gathering these favorite quotes on creativity, I could have continued down the rabbit hole for days. And naturally, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

I hope this list of my favorite quotes (and some from my writing community, too!) inspires you to close this window and go make something. It can be small, and it can evolve. The only point is to keep on making.

If you’re still looking for some more writing inspiration, you might like these too:

• You're a human. So write like one. How to do it in an age of AI.

• 15 Writing Prompts To Become a Better Writer

• Stop Writing a Shitty First Draft (SFD) & Do This Instead

• Fear of Writing: It Might Not Be What You Think. 10 Powerful Writing Prompts.

• Finding Feel-Good Flow in Your Writing Practice

Getting business owners unstuck is what we do every day inside the Writing Community.