The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

The creative process:

1. Discover – Read a lot. Observe the world. Notice.
2. Collect – Immediately record anything that strikes you.
3. Generate – Build on your notes to brainstorm lots of ideas.
4. Combine – Connect previously unconnected ideas.
5. Refine – Edit, edit, edit. Select the best.

In the creative process you do not make choices about what you do not want. You make choices about what you do want.

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.

If the creative process is so powerful, it would be natural to wonder why many artists have difficulties in their lives. It is because they do not know what they know.

Creative ideas happen when you stop thinking about what others will think.

creative people are always having ideas. That’s not the trick. The trick is learning how to capture them without being captured by them,

Rarely if ever do we know the grand intention, yet if we surrender to the creative impulse, our singular piece of the puzzle takes its proper shape.

To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.

You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.

A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.

When it comes to the creative process, patience is accepting that the majority of the work we do is out of our control.