Francis Bacon (1909-1992, artist):
1. "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." (Art-quotes.com)
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877, journalist):
2."We must not let daylight in upon the magic." (AZQuotes.com)
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989, artist):
3. "Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dalí spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life." (Interview with Victor Bockris, 1974)
Giles Deleuze (1925-1995, philosopher):
4."Creation takes place in bottlenecks... it's by banging your head on the wall that you find a way through... You have to open up words, break things open, to free earth's vectors." (Goodreads.com)
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004, philosopher):
5. "I was wondering myself if I know where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going." (Quoted in The Structuralist Controversy by Richard Macksey and Eugene Donato, 2007)
Paul Klee (1879-1940, artist):
6. "In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways. It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing: becoming is more important than being." (Diary, 1912)
Gerhard Richter (1932 - now, artist):
7. "I pursue no objectives, no systems, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don't know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty." (Doubt and belief in painting, 2003)
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943, inventor):
8. "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born." (Quoted in Nikola Tesla's Life & Work by Istvan G. Kocsis)
